


hecate's boon

by cherriesandwine



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Betrayal, Childhood Trauma, Daddy Issues, Demisexual Female Character, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Flashbacks, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Memory Loss, Mommy Issues, Multi, Not Canon Compliant - The Trials of Apollo, POV Bisexual Character, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Repression, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Will add tags as the story progresses, and it comes back to bite him in the ass, but in unconventional ways, connor stoll runs away from his problems, except for a select few, i mean it's the gods, jewish!connor stoll, jewish!travis stoll, the minor gods get the spotlight, the olympians are ASSHOLES, the stolls are geniuses, this basically ignores ToA ever happened im sorry for those who love the series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2020-10-26 20:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 78,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherriesandwine/pseuds/cherriesandwine
Summary: After the summer of the Giant War, Connor Stoll left the mythological world and never looked back—not for a quest, not for his cabin, and certainly not for any god—for the sake of his family and his sanity. His tactic works for about five years until a vaguely familiar face shows up at his college graduation ceremony, bringing chaos with her.Even worse, Diane Stone brings disturbing news of the former demigod defectors from Kronos' army being taken alive by monsters. At the root of her convoluted story? Alabaster Torrington, Connor's frenemy-turned-enemy, who has been missing since his exile.Against all logic and reason, Connor joins Diane on her suicide mission to find Alabaster. But the longer he spends trying to decode her unreadable face, the more he's unable to deny the fact that he has a past with both Alabaster, who he wants to forget, and Diane, who he can't remember.As the threads of their pasts with each other slowly come to light, Connor realizes that this whole debacle is a culmination of a decade's worth of unsaid emotions, regrets, and secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor Stoll's graduation ceremony goes from bad to worse to worst.

Graduation is supposed to be one of the happiest days of Connor Stoll’s life. And yet, as the ceremony concludes and he hurls his cap into the air along with everyone else, he distinctly feels the lack of a rush through his system, the song of elation that usually thrums in his veins on his best days. 

He’s lonely. No, he’s  _ bored.  _

If he weren’t feeling so empty, he might have envisioned the caps as a thousand arrows falling on him and the other Cabin Eleven members who had fought at his side during the Battle of Manhattan. But Connor can only stare listlessly as the caps make an unimpressive thud on the floor of his university’s auditorium. On cue, his and his classmates’ parents, relatives, friends, and whatnot erupt into a tremendous ovation. 

All around him, people are pulled into group hugs, and there are  _ way  _ more tears than Connor can handle right now. His face only bursts into an automatic smile when a few of his regular drinking buddies jump on his back, hollering and whooping like there’s no tomorrow. 

Well, he supposes there isn’t. He pushes down his feeling of unfeeling and lets others’ emotions wash over him like a highly contagious cold as he bends down to pick up his graduation cap and proceeds to wrap his friends in increasingly tight hugs. 

His traitorous mind supplies that none of them had faced mythological monsters, gods, Titans and Primordials like he and his fellow demigods had. Clarisse was in Arizona, finishing up her first year of med school; Will and Nico had decided to stay together in New Rome Uni; and Percy–

Oh, wait. Percy was probably here. Annabeth was Connor’s schoolmate, godsdammit. 

So Connor tells his brain to shut up and shove it with the unnecessarily angsty thoughts. 

* * *

“There’s our class salutatorian!” cheers Travis. Connor instantly regrets locking eyes with his brother and whirls around.

Unfortunately, he smacks his forehead right into Percy Jackson’s. 

“ _ Ow, fuck! _ ” Connor violently swears. Percy, with his terrible balance, shuffles backwards one, two steps, before falling over in a graceless heap. 

“Damn, I wanted to see the class  _ valedictorian _ , not the salutatorian,” groans Percy. 

“I wasn’t aware that Annabeth Chase was better-looking than me,” replies Connor, clutching his forehead.

“Fuck off, Connor,” says Percy, but there’s a laugh in his voice as he accepts the hand offered to him and is pulled up. Percy pulls him in for a hug, and Connor feels honored. With his tendency for pranking people, he expected more reservation from a frequent victim. 

He tells Percy this, and the Hero of Olympus stares at him with his mouth ajar. 

“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Cut him some slack, Con,” Travis says, slinging an arm around his brother. “He’s just excited to see Annie Bethie. They probably haven’t smooched in over 24 hours.”

“Call her that again, Travis, and I’m gonna give you a reason to go back to kindergarten,” Percy informs him brightly. 

“He’s not wrong, though,” Connor snickers. “I bet she was up until five in the morning chanting her speech over and over again.”

No chance for “smooching” there, as Travis put it. Percy’s eyes shifts into that sad-seal stare that sometimes got even Ms. Stoll cooing at him. And Connor and Travis’ mother did  _ not  _ coo. 

Speaking of. 

Connor turns to Travis. “Where’s Mom?”

Travis jabs his thumb at a spot behind him. “She’s there—oh wait.” He actually takes a second to turn around, only to gape at the apparently void-of-Mom space. “Oops.”

“Your mother is in good hands,” a voice chimes in, and Percy’s face brightens up with the force of a thousand suns. 

“I’m so proud of you!” he whoops. Annabeth is all-too-willing and grinning as Percy sweeps her up into his arms and whirls her around, all the while planting kisses on her face. “My girlfriend’s the valedictorian of class 2015!” 

“My son is here as well,” Ms. Stoll’s sardonic voice cuts through. 

“I don’t wanna be kissed by Percy though.” Then Connor grins. “Wait, actually, when I was sixteen—”

“I don’t love you enough to hear about your sexual awakening, Connor.” Still, Ms. Stoll can’t fight off the grin that stretches across her lips when Connor throws his arms around her. 

“Egg donor! Maternal parental unit! My heart for months has longed for you so!” Connor cries. 

“Shut up, second zygote.” She pulls away and pretends to smooth down his toga, but Connor knows she’s preening at his medals. Emphasis on the plurality of the noun. “The next person who tells me you and the first zygote are the same person is getting a ten-minute PowerPoint presentation from me.”   
  


Travis smiles like stupid at the mention of him. He’s not titled with anything nearly as fancy as “salutatorian,” but his position on the state track-and-field team, considering that he’s only been training since his third year in college, is prestigious already in itself. All in all, the Stolls are doing pretty great. 

_ It’s the reward of leaving Greek mythology behind,  _ Connor tells himself. He likes his peers very much (otherwise, Annabeth wouldn’t be his best friend), but the entities and politics that govern it—that’s a whole other story. Connor hasn’t even so much as heard of a quest since he was eighteen, and for that, he’s thrived.

Percy, on the other hand. Connor bites his lip to keep his laughter in, ready to clown Percy for having gods and other things show up at his apartment door at least every single month. He turns to Percy and Annabeth—

His eyes catch on a familiar face in the crowd. 

And she’s staring right back at him. 

Her name is on the tip of his tongue, but it can’t fall from his lips. He scans her up and down as quickly as he can; maybe something about her can help unstick the fragmented identity that’s refusing to peel off from the roof of his mouth. 

Dark, heavy-lidded eyes, the undersides of which are ringed with what looked like makeup. Skin so pale it seemed like it was almost graying, only set off even more by the all-black ensemble she wore. Fingerless gloves wrapped around each hand, combat boots laced tight up to her ankles, a black shirt hugging her torso, and a nicely cut leather jacket hanging off her shoulders. She wasn’t dressed for the graduation—Connor isn’t even sure if she took the effort to comb her hair before coming here, seeing as it was bursting out of her scalp and tumbling down her back like a pitch-black mane. 

He blinks, readying himself for another long look, but when he opens his eyes, she’s gone.

Connor is left staring at the space like an idiot. 

“Ask my dumbass son. I don’t know with him.”  
  
Ms. Stoll’s voice snaps him out of his reverie. “What?” he says, exactly like the dumbass she claimed him to be. 

“What are you gonna do after this, Connor?” Annabeth asks. 

She’s worried for him, he knows. Not two months ago, he knew his answer: law school. But now that graduation has finally swallowed him up, he doesn’t know what he wants. 

(He wants something different.)

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll take a gap year.”

Annabeth’s brow furrows. She breaks away from Percy’s side and grasps Connor’s hands tightly. 

“If you need anything, I’m just a call away,” she says firmly. 

“Okay, Miss Architect of Olympus,” he teases. His heart warms. He and Annabeth, they’re not as different as people think them to be. He bends down for a hug with his best friend since his preteens, his best friend since the moment someone else had dropped an actual poisonous spider down her shirt when she was 8. They conspired to get back at the culprit—Connor, though mischievous, had boundaries, and actually harming your victim was overstepping. Especially since putting spiders and Athena kids in the same room to terrify them was  _ his  _ idea in the first place. 

Aw, man. Connor is gonna miss her—even with all the mental breakdowns that she could induce in him just by having one herself. The hug is warm and soft.

Until every muscle in Annabeth’s arms tenses, and Connor nearly chokes. They’re still wrapped around his neck, after all. 

“What do you want?” she says into his neck icily.

At her words, Connor’s grip also tenses. She’s not talking to him. 

“I want to talk to him,” a low voice rasps. It’s the deepest voice that Connor has ever heard from a girl. 

Annabeth releases him from the hug, and he turns around to meet a dark, heavy-lidded gaze. 

As if sensing danger, his friends crowd at his side. Even his mother, a slender mortal who could be crushed in the blink of an eye, walks forward with a glare to rival Nico di Angelo’s. 

Well, except for Travis, who looks like a dying fish. Intimidation didn’t become him. 

“I know you,” Connor says. 

“For someone who graduated as the class salutatorian from their college, I’m surprised you have such bad memory,” she states. There’s no insult in her tone—just matter-of-fact. “I was under probation for a year after the Titan War.”

Something in Connor’s memory sparks, and his eyes flick to the leather straps criss-crossing across her chest, to the sword hilts barely visible from behind her hair. “Cabin Twenty-One. You were the only person there.”

Diane Stone, only daughter of Thanatos, the god and the personification of death, inclines her head. 

The uneasy feeling crawling up his spine is something he hasn’t felt in years. “Why are you here?”

Her eyes scans the crowd of demigods. “I made a mistake. I’ve been trailing a monster, and she’s not happy about it. I need reinforcements.”

Annabeth steps forward, jaw clenched and gray eyes blazing. “What the hell do you mean by ‘reinforcements?!’” she hisses. 

“You’re some of the most battle-worn demigods of our generation. Do you not have weapons?”

There’s silence. Connor feels chills erupt across his nape. 

He hasn’t held his weapon in a year. 

Out of nowhere, Percy groans. “Is it too much to ask to be left alone?!” he whines. “If we don’t have our weapons, will you let us go? Please? I scheduled a really nice dinner reservation with Annabeth here, and—”

“You’re never without weapon, Percy Jackson,” Diane interrupts. “There’s a bathroom on either side of the auditorium, if you must know. But out of all of you here, you’re the one who’d never be without a blade.”

“Are you threatening my son?!” Ms. Stoll snarls. Travis hooks an arm around her waist just in time to stop her from clawing at Diane’s face. “He wants nothing to do with your world!”

“I’m not threatening him, Ms. Stoll. I just need his and his friends’ help.” Diane looks at them. “Unless you’re a child of Hecate, Lamia is not an easy monster to defeat.”

Connor’s heart jumps up into his throat. “You’ve been tracking—”

She meets his gaze head-on. “Yes.”

“Why?!” he yells. “Do you know what  _ he’s _ done—”

There’s a cracking sound over their heads. Connor throws his gaze upwards, and his eyes widen at the sight. 

Frost is forming on the ceiling of the auditorium. The white, web-like veins spread out across the beams, thickening and layering into shards of ice the bigger they get. 

It’s the beginning of summer. There’s no other way to explain it except—

“Lamia,” Connor hears himself mutter in horror. 

“Mom, get out of the auditorium,” Travis orders. He jumps up on a seat and cupping his mouth, yells as loudly as he can, “GET OUT OF THE AUDITORIUM! THE CEILING IS GONNA FALL IN ON US!”   
  


Ms. Stoll looks simultaneously frightened and indignant. “Is it actually?!”

“No, I just need to create mass panic. THE CEILING IS ABOUT TO FALL IN ON US! Mom, please go out. You’ll be safer out there.”

“The mortals need to get out before Lamia has the chance to trap them here.” Their eyes fall on Percy. He scrunches his eyes shut and clenches his fists. “Get up on the chairs.”

They all obey. A moment later, the pipes in the bathroom rupture, and toilet water pools across the floor. Before the shrieks fill the air, Travis takes his last chance to be heard: “THE CEILING IS ABOUT TO FALL IN ON US! THE PIPES HAVE BROKEN! GET OUT!”

The crowd stampedes towards the exit doors. The security guards, alarmed, pull out their walkie-talkies and try to usher out guests as fast as possible. 

Connor glances up at the ceiling again. The ice is now so dense that the temperature in the room has plunged, his graduationt toga no longer protection enough to tamp down his shivers. He thinks he can see a white mist forming above their heads.

Beside him, Annabeth has already shed her toga and carefully draped it over the back of the seat she was standing on. 

“How the hell are you gonna fight in heels?” Connor asks.

Percy holds up a paper bag. “I brought her sneakers.”

Connor also pulls the toga over his head and drops it—except instead of landing on the back of the chair like he intended, it slides over the edge and gets soaked in the toilet water on the floor. 

He stares. 

“... I don’t have a weapon. I’m not gonna be much use here.”

Travis looks around. There are only a few handfuls of mortals now, none of whom seem to notice the five teenagers standing on their seats. 

His brother reaches into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and slides out a familiar handle. 

Considering the life-and-death situation he’s currently in, Connor feels such an intense wave of betrayal that he can only grit his teeth and violently yank the dagger out of his brother’s grasp.  _ Kavene _ is as long as his forearm—and is tangible proof that Travis wasn’t as estranged from the demigod life as Connor thought he was. 

From the opposite pocket, Travis pulls out a dagger identical to the one Connor holds.

Annabeth shoves her black heels into the waiting paper bag, held by Percy, and produces her trademark Yankees baseball cap. “Where is she?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Connor sees Diane scrutinizing the scrunched-up cap in Annabeth’s hand. “Mmm, maybe about thirty seconds out.”

“Gee, thanks for the warning in advance!” Percy says sarcastically. 

“Annabeth, got a plan?” Travis hurriedly asks. 

Annabeth’s eyebrows scrunch together. “I’ve never fought Lamia. But I expect her magic will make it hard to stick to any sort of plan. So the best we can do is take stock of our abilities and weapons. We’ve got Percy, with his sword and supremacy over toilets—”  
  
“Hey!”  
  


“Travis is extremely fast and agile, and Connor is… Connor is a cryptid. I’m leaving the spontaneous surprises and tricks to you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And I can turn invisible, and Diane—”

“She’s here.”

Their heads whip to the entrance of the auditorium. 

For a second, there’s only the unsettling silence. The chilly fog draws tendrils over their eyes, and the blocks of ice start to melt into drops rapidly hurtling towards the floor. It gives Connor enough time to wonder if Diane is bluffing, and—

It’s enough time. 

The instant Connor closes his eyes to blink away the pricking cold burrowing into his eyes, the floor underneath them boils molten-hot and bursts into thousands of fragments. 

Someone else’s back slams into his chest, and his back crashes into the nearest vertical surface. The world goes grainy and all fuzzy, and a sharp ache crowds all over Connor’s skull. 

“Hello, children,” Lamia laughs into all their ears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like the headcanon that annabeth and connor are the best of friends, and i will defend it to my death. it's the cutest shit ever: i imagine connor leeching of annabeth's stash of redbull bc he's a little shit like that, but he always replenishes her supply after since he knows she needs it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lamia's up against most skilled and powerful demigods in the 21st century: two devious and fleet-footed thieves, the legendary son of Poseidon, the smartest demigod alive, and a gothic enigma. Killing her should be easy... right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning/s: fight scene ahead, so there are some details about violence, though nothing too graphic (i hope)

It takes Connor several dizzying seconds to realize that the person in his lap is Diane, if the wild mane of black curls currently tangled in between the buttons of his dress shirt are anything to go by. 

He chokes on the dust drifting through the thick air, but before he can crack a joke to combat the urge to push her away, Diane pushes all her weight onto her feet. His legs are trapped between her and the wet floor.

“I can’t believe it took you so long to recognize me,” she murmurs under her breath. 

Maybe the explosion jogged Connor’s memory, or maybe it has something to do with the saddening reality that it’s been quite some time since someone has been curled up on top of him so willingly—being a senior was hard, alright—but either way, his mind starts shoving forward multiple facts, filed away like computer icons. 

Like the fact that in the cool spring of 2010, just before the Giant War, he had been bound by an oath on the River Styx to supervise Diane Stone, only daughter of Thanatos, the god and personification of death, at all times for four months. 

“My mother taught me to not think of other women when in the presence of someone special,” Connor replies with exaggerated poise. 

He only receives a disdainful snort for his quip. “What?! Did you not see me hugging Annabeth?!”

“Maybe I’m better off if you don’t remember me, after all.” Diane rolls off his thighs and pulls him up by the arm. 

“So. About Lamia.”

She nods. “You have  _ Kavene _ ?”

Connor wants to ask how she knows the name of Travis’ knife and also how the hell she manages to pronounce the Yiddish word perfectly when most white people butcher it, but he supposes that’s another can of worms they don’t have time for. He tucks it away in an imaginary knife-shaped flat icon in his mind. 

“Yeah. You want me to create a diversion?”

She shakes her head. “As of now, we’re safe—Lamia went straight to Percy since he’s the most powerful demigod here. But if you see a rune shaped like the Nike logo, break it by all means necessary.”

He snickers. “Please tell me that’s her trying to appeal to Nike by using her brand.”

Diane looks him dead in the eye. “Yes. She managed to ink an Adidas into one of my jackets, and the second I threw it up in the air, a bald eagle snatched it up.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“No.”

Connor wipes the dust off  _ Kavene _ with his sleeve. “How do you know where Lamia is?”

He looks up to meet Diane’s flint-like eyes. The glint in them is hard to read, given all the smoke and dust floating around their heads. 

The silence between them stretches. Connor clears his throat and awkwardly wipes  _ Kavene  _ on his sleeve at least two more times. 

“I can sense life auras, their strengths, their identities, and their proximities,” Diane finally narrates in a monotone. 

Another file suddenly jumps from the recesses of his mind seconds too late. He remembers hastily trailing her through the dense, dark forests of Camp Half-Blood, his feet light enough to make a KGB assassin envious, and Diane finding his concealed gaze through the foliage anyway. 

_ “I can feel you, you know.” _

_ “If you wanted some skin-on-skin contact, you should’ve just said so!” _

_ “Fuck off.” _

Connor inwardly curses his brain. 

“I’m sorry—”

“You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for.” She turns away. Her feet make barely any splashes in the puddle of water trembling on the floor. “There’s no point.”

He’s trying. He’s really trying to remember. He feels like he’s in the middle of a history exam, trying to remember years and months and figures and numbers that his dyslexia has crumpled up and tossed into the trash can like a ball of paper.

A war cry rings out through the grey smoke, and Connor nearly jumps. Gods, it’s been so long since he’s fought—he might as well be a mortal now. In comparison, Diane only walks closer to the sound, closer to the danger. Her head is cocked to the side. 

“You’re getting in the way of my date!” Ah. Percy. There’s the trademark metallic  _ whoosh!  _ of Riptide, and it strikes against another metal. 

Suddenly, under Connor’s feet, the water starts receding faster than even his brother could run. It disappears into the curtain of smoke, and Connor can only squint desperately through the room. About a good fifty or so meters away from him, he can just barely make out two silhouettes. 

The smaller one makes some sort of punching motion, and the water’s roars echo again, crashing onto the bigger opponent. They freeze in place, and Connor holds his breath—

“I  _ am  _ your date,  _ vlacas _ !” 

“Oh no,” Diane hisses under her breath. “... Stoll,  _ move _ !”

His feet are frozen as he watches the water slough off the bigger silhouette, only for them to melt away into—

—Annabeth. 

_ Then where was— _

“FOOL!” a shrill voice shrieks in delight. “ _ Incantare: Iubeo Gladius!” _

Connor’s always had a talent for languages, even in languages his half-siblings found too difficult.

Like Latin. 

_ I bid my sword.  _

A wicked gold gleam catches his attention, just out of the corner of his eye, and Connor scrambles away from the trajectory of the blade hurtling towards his neck, but he’s too slow, and Lamia’s waiting just fifteen meters away.

In other words: he’s about to die. 

The sheer force of the sword is sending air whistling into the back of his neck. He takes a shuddering breath, and he swerves to the left.

But the instant his feet veer to the left, he can tell he’s made a mistake. The sword only cuts a diagonal in the air, the distance between him and certain death made even shorter by his stupidity. 

_ Shitshitshit! Shi— _

A back slams into his, and the whole world pitches forward as he catches himself on his hands and knees. He whirls around. 

“Get out of the way!” Diane snarls at him. From this angle, he can see her shoulders straining under her shirt; she’d pulled two  _ kopis  _ seemingly out of nowhere and blocked the trajectory of Lamia’s gladius by sheer brute force alone. 

Connor scrambles up, still unwilling to believe his good luck. 

Luck, of course. Luck. A snicker escapes his winded lungs. 

“What are you laughing at?!” Diane snaps. “Don’t turn your back on Lamia!”

“Don’t be a fool, girl,” Lamia laughs. She glides closer, and Connor backs away to Diane’s side. The gladius caught in the cross of Diane’s pair of  _ kopis  _ jerk to the left, yet Diane holds them back with a grunt. “This is a lost cause. Just as how you want to save my brother.”

“Shut up,” Connor says. “ _ You’re  _ the fool here.”

He looks at the crossguard of the gladius, and just as he suspected, a Nike logo is engraved into its leather. He snickers and raises  _ Kavene  _ to mirror the logo—to form a heart. 

“NO!” screeches Lamia. Concentration broken, her grip on her incantation wavers. She recalls her blade instead, and Diane faces her with the most furious expression that her stone-like face can seem to accommodate. 

“If you’re not going to help me, leave us be,” she says coldly. 

“Sadly, if anyone can find Alabaster, it’s you, not me,” Lamia spits. She pauses before letting her lipsticked lips curl into a serpentine smile. “You’re really still in love with him, after all these years.”

Faster than Connor’s eyes can follow, Diane reaches out and grabs Lamia by the collar of her mom polo (its color, by the way, a horrible yellow-ish offwhite color, totally deserved that), and then fucking  _ hurls _ her whole body into the mist, all the while still holding her  _ kopis _ . A considerable distance away, Connor just barely hears a loud thud. 

“Shit, I volunteer as tribute!” he yelps. 

Diane gives him a strange look. 

Connor blinks then laughs awkwardly. “Uh. Nothing.”

She gives him another strange look before probably deciding that he’s not worth her time. “Let’s regroup,” she says. 

“Yeah. Just, um, lead the way.”

They quickly loop around the area where Lamia disappeared into. It’s still foggy enough that they have to squint hard to see what’s going on ten feet away, but the smoke seems to be thinning out enough for Connor to breathe. 

His senses are on high alert, his blood is thrumming in ways it hasn’t in a couple of years, and he can’t decide if he likes it or not. Ever since he’s gone to college, he’s been staving off his need for adrenaline with lots of dumb college shit—pranks, parties, alcohol, sex, and even recreational drugs at some point. But the song that coursed through his veins had never even come close to the simultaneous crawl of ice-cold fear and the fire for mischief up the knobs of his spine when he stared down a monster at the end of his blade or watched an elaborate prank unfold from a distance. 

Sometimes, he wondered whether the demigods that had managed to graduate Camp were ever able to shake off the constant drive to get drunk on adrenaline and spontaneity. Maybe he and his brother were exceptions to the rule—junkies whose need for adventure were already inborn and only made worse by some trauma complex they had acquired over the two wars then some. But the difference between him and Travis was that his brother had managed to find a healthy outlet and  _ to stop thinking.  _

Connor had never been able to stop thinking. Even with a bag of some dubious substance in hand and a fragile bottle of liquor groaning in his grip—or even with someone’s breath on his neck and their hips writhing against his—he’d never stopped thinking. 

“Wait.” His waist smacks right ino Diane’s outstretched arm. 

They stand still in tense silence. Diane’s eyebrows are scrunched together, and her eyes are narrowed down on a spot through the smoke. 

A faint silhouette flashes in the fog for a second before disappearing again. 

There’s only one person in this room who can move that fast. 

“Is that my brother?” he whispers in horror. 

The grim set of Diane’s mouth is answer enough. 

“Where’s Lamia?!” 

“He’s going to attack her,” hisses Diane. “Shit, he knows how to fight Hecate offspring, right?”

“We both fought in the Titan War,” Connor weakly offers. But it had been  _ his  _ half of Cabin Eleven that had the misfortune of facing the battalion of Hecate kids, not Travis’. “And we trained together with them after the war.”

Diane shakes her head. “Lamia and Alabaster are in a whole other class of their own compared to the ones in Camp. Alabaster wasn’t amnestied for a reason—it was bad enough that he could match a minor god’s power, but his anti-Olympian sentiments didn’t help his case either when he went on trial. Stupid boy.”

Before Connor could make fun of the fact that she must’ve broken some record for how many words she’s ever said in one go, she claps a hand over his mouth. 

Not a second later, Lamia’s laugh booms through the auditorium. The hairs on Connor’s forearms shoot upwards; the source was barely five meters away from them. “Son of Hermes! Do you honestly think you are match enough for me?”

“I’m sadly not a match, bro,” Travis laughs, then there’s a gruesome sound of uncooked meat tearing. Drops of ichor splatter before Diane’s feet, and Lamia’s scream of agony pierces their ears. 

Travis stumbles out of the mist. His hair is matted with golden mush as well. “I sliced her face in half,” he says proudly. 

“Nice!” Connor whisper-shouts. They raise their hands for a muffled high-five. “Vertically or horizontally?”

“Bro, horizontally, duh. I’m just that jaw-dropping, I guess.”

“If you see a Nike logo, vandalize the shit out of it.”

Travis nods. “Gotchu, bro. I cut her all the way to the mamdibull—oh wait, I think it’s mandible.”

Connor has an epiphany. “Cut out her tongue. She can’t enchant if she doesn’t have a tongue to say the spells.”

Diane whirls around to face him. “We’re in the middle of  _ fog.  _ Hearing her incantations is our biggest advantage as of now. If she’s forced to draw runes or physically enchant,  _ we can’t see that. _ ”

“What good is hearing her incantations if we can’t fight against them?!” 

“Drawing runes would take more time and energy,” Travis defends Connor. “I have to agree–WOAH—”

“Travis!” Connor yells in alarm. His brother’s body goes as rigid as a corpse’s, like he’s been bound by ropes from head to toe. He tightens his clammy grip on  _ Kavene _ . 

“As touched as I am that you children are putting so much thought and effort into defeating me,” begins Lamia, her corpulent figure snaking through the smoke, “it’s simply not going to happen.” 

The lower face of her face is indeed hanging on by scraps of skin and wearying tendons. Like this, the forked tongue flickers restlessly against the roof of her mouth, and saliva drips down the severed part of her face and over her lower lip.

“I am not confined to incantations and runes only, children. I can will my magic through my body as well. For example.”

Her sausage-like fingers clench into a fist and slam down into the palm of her other hand. Travis doubles over with a choked out scream and vomits blood.

“Travis!” Connor yells in horror. 

The ice-and-fire have started ghosting across his neck, and it’s making him see red. Lamia does the gesture again, and Travis throws up another bout of fresh blood. 

Before his brain can catch up to his mouth, he angrily spits, “Gods, no wonder you’re so bitter all the time, huh? How does it feel, knowing that a decrepit millennia-old piece of shit like you couldn’t best a scrawny teenager?” A laugh bubbles out of his chest. “If this is the extent of your power, no wonder your mother chose Alabaster as her champion. Not you.”

“You—!” She growls. “Your brother will die the most painful death for your words.”

“My brother can’t die if you die first,” he scoffs. 

He’s not as fast as Travis, but he still beat nymphs in footraces back in Camp. The ground leaves his feet as he launches himself at Lamia, the faint scent of heavy smoke resting on his tongue. There’s a prickling sensation of sparks under his oxfords, but he just crouches lower and avoids Lamia with a sharp turn. Connor stretches out the arm holding  _ Kavene _ , and—

Gold splatters him in the eye, and he lets out a yell. His voice intermingles with Lamia’s, rising into the air and echoing into the seeming emptiness. 

Hastily, he swipes a hand across his eyes, but Lamia’s already moving towards him, shockingly fast for such a heavy-looking creature like her. His eyes fly down to the hem of her awful mom polo, where numerous runes are embroidered in a row. 

At the last second, he remembers to bring up  _ Kavene _ , just as Lamia’s gladius comes crashing down on him. Their blades make an awful screech against each other, and with a grunt, Connor throws aside the gladius and aims for Lamia’s stomach. Her left hand yanks out a dagger, about three inches shorter than  _ Kavene _ , and blocks him again. 

_ Shit!  _ Connor is forced to lunge backwards as the gladius threatens to separate his legs from the rest of him. He leaps to the side and grabs Lamia’s arm, stabs straight through the wrist holding the gladius, and  _ twists  _ as violently as he can. 

“ _ ARRGHHHH _ !” Lamia clenches her fist, and all Connor sees before he’s thrown backward into the air is both Lamia’s eyes and her runes lighting up neon green, like Greek fire. He lands on his shoulder, and despite his attempt to minimize the pain by rolling over, the impact jolts all the way up his nape. He flops back on the ground, trying to regulate his breathing through the agony. 

“You’ve done enough. Stay,” Diane’s voice commands. 

Connor forces himself to squeeze his eyes open. A thick curtain of black curls hangs over him, and the first thing he sees is the underside of Diane’s jawline. 

She’s not even looking at him. Humiliation courses through him. “I’m not incompetent,” he grits out. “I’ve gone through worse.”

“I’m sure you have.” This time, she looks down at him. Hands, gentler than he thought they would be, cradle the underneath of his shoulders and push him up to a sitting position. She bears his weight all on her own; the strain in his joints stretches in agreement at her handling. “But you’ve done enough for now. Your brother, too; he’s just immobilized for the time being. I’ve pulled him away to somewhere safe. We can handle the rest.”

He hadn’t even noticed Diane dragging Travis away. Before he can protest, she stands up and sweeps past him. 

He bites the inside of his cheek and scrunches his eyes shut in pain. Damn, he’s really out of practice; he used to be able to walk on a broken ankle for half a day before giving up and turning himself into the infirmary. 

He decides to lean his weight on his right hand, but his palm presses into a leather shaft. 

His eyes shoot open. 

It’s Lamia’s gladius. 

Gods, his pickpocketing antics had always served him well in battles. Despite the pain radiating all the way down his left shoulder, he manages a smile and forces his limp hand to pick  _ Kavene _ up. 

Ahead of him, the sound of rushing water catches his ears. He looks up to see Percy’s back standing strong and sure, arms raised to command the tornado of water whirling in front of him. Beside him is Diane, brandishing the wicked curve of her blades, and to her right is Annabeth, clenching her Yankees cap in her left hand and her drakon-bone sword in her right. 

They’ll hold Lamia off. But Connor has his own job. 

Annabeth takes a deep breath then raises her voice. “Lamia! We’ve come to challenge you.”

Connor puts the tip of  _ Kavene  _ to the hilt of Lamia’s gladius and starts carving. 

Before Lamia had blasted Connor away, the runes at the bottom of her shirt had looked like normal, if eccentric, shirt designs. But when she channeled magic through her body… 

The Greek fire-green had flooded through her eyes and through the thread of her polo. 

Connor had a theory. A shaky one with little basis, but little basis was better than complete guesswork. 

_ “Magic…” Alabaster looked like a god with the moon shining over his head. An emaciated god, but a god nonetheless. Connor gaped up at him. “Magic draws its power from intentions.” _

“Now!” Diane’s voice yells. Percy throws forward the tornado, and it’s immediately blasted apart by Lamia. 

But it seems like the three of them had been expecting it. The moment Diane had shouted, Annabeth had yanked on her cap and disappeared. And more confusingly, so did Diane and Percy. 

And so when the tornado sloshed to the ground, Lamia was left in the center of it, visibly perplexed at the lack of tasty demigods. 

Connor carves faster. If runes were only activated when Lamia flooded her physical channels with magic… 

It just meant his intention to kill needed to be strong enough to translate into the rune. 

Suddenly, Lamia’s eyes bulge and she whirls to the side, deflecting Riptide, the blade and its owner suddenly visible again, with her own blade. The  _ clang!  _ that rings out is so piercing that Connor winces. 

Percy’s strength was really on another level. But Lamia seemed to be holding her own against one of the most powerful demigods of their generation just fine. With one arm, she hisses, and the edge of her blade begins scraping against Riptide. Even through the fog, Connor can see the veins and tendons straining through Percy’s neck and biceps. 

With barely so much as a twitch of his fingers, Percy hauls the pool of water over to them, dousing both him and Lamia. The monster screeches, and her grit wavers, but Percy, only strengthened further, pulls his sword away from the stalemate and runs his blade through her stomach. 

Lamia shrieks, but her body only glows with more green. Riptide is ejected by Lamia’s body, which begins to close up what would’ve been a mortal wound. 

“Crap!” Conceding, Percy backs away as fast as he can. But his retreat only seems to call forward a dark blur hurtling towards Lamia: Diane. She wastes no time and begins swinging down both of her blades on Lamia’s lone dagger. 

If the force behind Percy’s spars had made Connor’s ears ring, Diane’s burrowed all the way into the nerves of Connor’s root canal, as if he were the one being struck. But despite the brute strength in each clash of metal, Diane’s arms are tireless, bringing down one swing after the other. Lamia only barely matches her pace, flinging her dagger this way and that in a desperate attempt to fend off all of Diane’s strikes. Already, she was beginning to take more labored breaths, more time to raise her dagger each time Diane swung at her, while Diane had barely begun to break a sweat. 

Connor puts down his dagger cautiously. Maybe he isn’t needed after all. 

An invisible wind whips past Lamia and Diane, and something tears through the scrap of skin barely holding Lamia’s face together. The lower half of her jaw falls to the ground. 

Connor gapes. Lamia’s tongue is missing as well. 

A Yankees cap falls to the floor, and Annabeth reappears, breathing hard from exertion. She tosses the tongue aside, and the three of them advance on Lamia. 

There’s now a steady flow of ichor from Lamia’s face and from the tattered rags that used to be her neck. Lamia’s eyes widen with fury, and her half-exposed vocal chords begin to constrict and shake as she lets out a bloodcurdling scream. 

Connor yells in alarm, “Guys! Watch out!”

But his reaction comes too late; Lamia floods herself once more with magic. 

Not all the embroidered runes on her shirt light up this time: only designs of a pair of wings, a spear, and a leaf glow bright green. 

Connor scrambles away and thinks as fast as he can. Wings, spear, and leaf. Wings, his father: speed. Spear, Ares: strength. Leaf—what was the leaf?

Out of the corner of his vision, he glimpses the tongue dragging itself across the floor towards its owner. Lamia’s cheeks have also begun to stretch downwards—forming new skin and muscle. 

Percy and Diane share a look before gripping their swords and throwing their arms back for momentum—

Only Annabeth has caught onto what Connor has. “Wait, no!” she cries out. 

Lamia gives a triumphant shriek and encloses one hand each around Diane’s and Percy’s necks. 

“Shit!” he says, louder than he’d intended, but it catches Annabeth’s attention. Her grey eyes are wide with pleading as she freezes, wanting with every fiber of her body to save Percy (and Diane, too, he guesses, but mostly Percy) but unable to do so. 

Percy and Diane were decidedly  _ not  _ choking normally. Lamia squeezes their necks so hard it’s a miracle that their arteries didn’t burst right then and there. Their eyes bulge, and their faces redden to an impossible degree. 

Connor looks down at his handiwork on Lamia’s gladius and curses. He’s not an artist like most Hecate kids, but it’ll have to do. 

Annabeth’s eyes flit down to the two blades he holds. He catches himself on the gladius as he pulls himself to stand and holds her gaze.  _ Trust me _ , he mouths. 

Without hesitation, Annabeth sets her mouth into a grim line and nods. She snatches her Yankees cap off the ground and disappears. 

“Lamia!” he calls, heart thundering in his chest. 

He has one chance to get this right. 

She looks at him. 

And the moment she does, he hurls  _ Kavene  _ as hard and as fast as he can, and in the blink of an eye, it’s burrowed into her chest. 

She takes her eyes off him and looks down at the blade. 

Big mistake. That moment is all Connor needs to sprint forward and burrow the gladius all the way to its hilt—

Right in the middle of the leaf-like rune. 

The leaf was representative of its whole: a laurel. Apollo’s symbol.

A rune to call on healing. 

Lamia’s eyes widen. The jagged ends of skin, muscle, and sinew stop expanding, and her tongue, a mere few feet away, flops to the floor like a lifeless fish. 

The green glow previously lighting up the healing rune flows to the hilt of the dagger, seeking a new outlet. 

And Connor stares Lamia right in the eye as her magic fills up the iconic three stripes of a certain shoe brand. 

“Adidas should pay me to endorse them,” he tells her cheerfully, and he backs away just as Lamia begins to screech, a horrible, horrible sound. Her grip slackens, and Percy and Diane crumple to the ground to swallow mouthfuls of sweet oxygen. 

Out her half-formed jaw comes the green glow of her magic, spilling out of all the scratches and wounds that they had managed to carve into her skin.

One rune that catches his eye in particular is his father’s rune. It’s glowing extra bright. 

Lamia staggers to her feet towards him, but with the speed rune feeding on so much of her magic, she becomes a blur before his eyes. 

Shit!

Connor tries to run away, but he’s too slow. Gods, he was dumb in life, he was also going to be dumb in death. Demigods didn’t need any Adidas runes to have bad luck, huh?

A back slams into his, and he falls to the floor, head swimming with adrenaline and an odd sense of deja vu. 

He looks up, and Diane’s above him again, standing between him and Lamia. The monster’s face had gone slack, a contrasting picture (a meme-worthy one) in comparison to Diane’s locked jaw and sweat-beaded forehead. 

She’d let Lamia propel herself straight onto her twin  _ kopis _ . 

“This is your last chance. Tell me how to find Alabaster, or you meet your end with Stygian Iron. You will never reincarnate,” Diane hisses.

But Lamia was too far gone; she was already slumping on the blades running through her middle. Her eyes blank and her mouth slack, she could only manage, “My work… my millennia of hard work… He will ruin it…!”

Rage flashes in Diane’s flint-like eyes, and before any of them could react, she lets out a guttural scream and jerks her  _ kopis  _ in opposite directions. 

Lamia’s left half topples over to one side, and her right to another. For a moment, Diane’s blades glow with a faint purple before they settle back into their onyx color. 

Diane takes a few deep gulps of air before sinking to her knees. On the pale column of her neck, Lamia had managed to leave handprints, already purpling from the immense force of the monster’s grip. The front of her all-black ensemble is splattered with bright gold ichor, and it has Connor sending a prayer up to whoever the god of laundry was. 

Annabe th makes her way over to them, dragging a heaving Percy in one hand and a newly mobile and barely conscious Travis in another. Connor scrambles over to his brother and cradles his head. 

And for the moment, they’re all too stunned and exhausted to say even a single word. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kopis is basically the greek version of the egyptian kopesh, but the blade is more of a wavy line rather than a crescent curve. they're harder to handle than the regular longsword bc the blade tends to dip downwards due to its shape, so it's ideally used for slicing and slashing. stabbing, unless there's a great deal of power and momentum involved, is a messy affair with the kopis.
> 
> tbh, the only reason i went with a kopis was that i wanted some variety in weapons lmao. 
> 
> kavene, by the way, means "watermelon" in yiddish. it will be explained... later in the story... probably...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is definitely Diane's fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning/s: swearing!!!

“What the hell was that spell?” Connor seethes. The corners of his brother’s mouth are still stained with bright red, and Travis looks too wan and out of his wits for his comfort. 

He turns to Diane. “What spell was that?!” he demands. 

Diane’s eyebrow gives a small twitch. _ You mean you haven’t seen it before? _her face seems to say, but instead she replies, “Incantation for internal bleeding. It makes the blood vessels in the target area expand to their breaking point.”

Annabetth’s face drains of color. “We have to take him to the hospital. The blood might pool and—”

_ Gastrointestinal bleeding. _Fear lodges something heavy in the back of Connor’s throat. 

“Yeah, but like, how the fuck are we gonna explain this?” Travis slurs. 

“Bitch, you think this usually happens because someone gets a spell that makes them vomit blood cast on them? They’ll probably assume you’re a constipated bastard,” Connor snaps back. 

Percy’s hand grips Connor’s shoulder. “Calm down, bro,” he tries.

“I will NOT BE CALM!” Connor roars. “There’s… There’s a hospital on campus... “

“Connor, help me up,” Travis groans. Connor shoves him back onto the ground and drags his brother’s arms over his shoulders. 

“Like hell you’re getting up by yourself,” Connor snarls. “Get on.”

His brother holds tight as Connor gathers himself and slowly rises, hands under Travis’ knees. Once he’s upright, he shifts his grip on Travis and strides toward the auditorium door. 

“Connor,” Percy tries again, “I can help you—”

“Tell my mom to get the car,” he says lowly. He turns away and continues towards the door. “Now.”

Behind him, he can feel Percy hesitate before the other runs past him, Annabeth’s Yankees cap in his hand. Connor closes his eyes and tries to regulate his breathing. 

Against his neck, Travis’ head lolls like a bobblehead figure’s. 

“Tell me if you’re about to throw up on me.”

“Tell me if you’re about to drop me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, too.”

“His life force isn’t dimming at an alarming rate. He’ll be fine.”

Connor’s jaw clenches before he can stop it, and he glares at Diane. “Do you have no tact?”

She blinks. “I thought it would be comforting.”

“How are we getting out?” Annabeth asks. “Percy took my invisibility cap.”

“If you think I’m gonna let a crowd stop me—”

“I can shroud us in the Mist. We will be unnoticeable to everyone except your mother. Maybe you’d want to inform her.”

Annabeth nods rapidly for Connor. “All of us? At the same time?”  


“Yes.”

Diane splays her fingers like she’s about to play the piano. One by one, the finely boned and tapered fingers curl inwards at a languid pace, and it makes Connor want to yell at her to hurry up. But the come-hither motions instantly cease once Diane has made two fists. 

He and Diane lock eyes. “Don’t fight it,” she tells him, and that’s all the warning he gets before she throws an unseen blanket over all of them, and the world glitches like a video’s quality breaking down from 360p to 240p. 

“Let’s go.”

“Why the fuck does the world look like a 240p video now? My 1080p vision is screaming,” Travis childishly grumbles. A strange, tense laugh rises out of Connor. 

“Can you stop plagiarizing my thoughts, please?”

“I’m older, _ you’re _plagiarizing my everything.”

“I can leave you here. Right now.”

Travis smiles against the collar of his polo. “Sure.”

* * *

****

By some miracle, Connor manages to get Travis inside the car and be driven to the hospital by Mom without any of them causing an incident. Multiple times, Mom nearly flew into a road rage at the bewildered graduation guests who, for some reason, had no idea how to properly cross a road. Connor had to lock the doors on the driver’s side and push the stick shift into parking mode to keep Mom from running over frightened pedestrians. 

Inside the ER, the staff thankfully don’t ask why the hell someone as young and fit as Travis has fresh blood pooling in his stomach. They’re nice and efficient, and Travis is admitted to have his MRI scan by the time Percy, Annabeth, and Diane catch up with them at the hospital. 

Diane doesn’t have even a single shred of guilt on her face, which is probably what has Connor slamming her up against the wall. And not in the sexy way. 

“If my brother dies it’s on you,” he hisses in her face. “Are you gonna take responsibility? Huh? Huh! Or maybe you’re really just here to collect his soul!” He spits at her feet. “Over my dead fucking body. If I have my way, I’ll be delivering _ you _ —”  


“Connor!” Mom grabs his elbows just as he moves to punch Diane in her stone-like face. “Stop making a scene!”

“OR WHAT?!” Connor yells. “OR FUCKING WHAT?!”

A nurse runs over to them and combines efforts with Mom to push him into a seat. “Sir, you’re disturbing the other guests. If you continue this, we will be forced to remove you,” he says sternly. 

The sound of his own breaths are still ringing in his ears, but he catches sight of the other people in the ER. It’s enough to make him swallow down the boiling fury. He steeples his hands and lets his fingernails dig crescent marks in between his knuckles. 

“Yeah. Okay, okay, I’m okay,” he grits out. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m okay.”

He waits, waits until the nurse’s footsteps fade away until he dares to mutter, “I stayed away from the Greeks for a reason, Diane Stone.”

A presence settles beside him, and a hand grips his shoulder. “Connor, it’s not her fault,” Mom says into his ear. “But if it actually is, I’ll beat her up myself.”

He lifts his head to glare at her. “Can you make up your mind?”

She throws up her hands like he’s a cop asking her to surrender. “Innocent ‘til proven guilty, Zygote Two!”

“Your eldest son is currently lying under an x-ray machine because he has blood in his stomach,” he says. “Do you really think that could’ve happened under normal circumstances? If our plans for today had gone as planned?”

“Connor—”

“C’mon, Ma, let’s go see how much steak we can eat until we start throwing up blood,” he bites out sarcastically. 

“That was not my intention. I’m sorry that your brother was harmed.”

“You can fuck off,” Mom says without missing a beat. 

Diane frowns and squats down to look Connor in the eye. He refuses the return the same courtesy, but from the corner of his eye, it looks like she’s kneeling. It gives him some sort of sick vindication. 

“If you think I brought Lamia to you to somehow fuck up your lives, you’re wrong,” she says. “I was just in need of help.”

Connor laughs. “That’s what all heroes say, don’t they? ‘_ We need help.’ _Then to hell with the aftermath, because everyone else is just collateral anyway.”

Behind Annabeth, Percy’s head snaps up. Connor keeps his head turned away. 

“We’ve helped you already,” he mutters. “You can be well on your way to finding him, now that your problem is solved.”

“If you think I’ve done you wrong, then I should help you in some way.”

“The only thing worse than helping a hero is having a hero help you,” he flatly retorts. “All their enemies notice you.” 

“You should at least know what your brother got harmed for, then,” she insists.

“Does Connor have to spell it out for you?” Mom demands. “He wants _ nothing _to do with your world!”

She’s right. Aside from keeping in touch with his closest friends from Camp, having Annabeth as his best friend, and giving Travis his approval to (finally) date Katie Gardner, Connor has cut all ties and burnt all bridges to quests, deities, and monsters. The last time he’d fought a monster was half a year ago, and that was because he’d spilled his vodka on the _ empousa _ in his rush to exit the bar before she could notice; running away was now his go-to tactic for dealing with anything that had appetites for ichor. His weapons are somewhere back in the dorms, the divine nature of Celestial Bronze the only thing keeping his daggers from rotting. And any IMs, even if they were from Hermes, he slashed his arm through before any conversation could take place.

He’s lived a more peaceful life for all his paranoia and isolation, and so have Travis and Mom. Case in point: the moment another demigod outside his control shows up, his brother lands himself in the hospital with a critical condition. 

Connor refuses to let any more than that happen. He looks stupid, but he’s not; this will just snowball further if he lets things take their usual course. 

He stands up and strides past Diane. “I don’t trust myself to kick her out right now,” he says frankly to Annabeth, not bothering to lower his voice. 

Annabeth meets his gaze head-on, her lips in a tight, grim line. Her eyes are doing that thing that freaks Connor out—the way the lights over their heads catch the grey of her irises seems to light them up from the inside, making he look like an all-knowing god. 

“Connor,” she begins, and Connor tenses—her tone is careful, considering, and non-judgemental—as she continues, “do you not know who that is?”

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

“That’s Diane, Connor—”

“I’m aware,” he interrupts. “And what about it?”

She frowns at him. “You’re treating an old friend like that? I know you don’t want anything to do with the Olympians, but she’s—”

Connor’s sharp “Ha!” leaps before he can grab a hold of it. “Old friend? The fuck?”

At that, her gaze tenses—no, it braces itself. “Connor, what did you do.”

“What do you mean what did I do?” He turns to Percy. “If Annabeth is not gonna do it—”

Annabeth clamps down on his wrist before he can direct a threatening finger at Percy. “You do not ignore me while I’m talking to you,” she says coldly. 

“I’m not leaving my brother, so I’m saying that she leaves right now,” he snaps. 

His temper versus her hubris. It’s a ticking time bomb waiting to reenact Chernobyl. Percy quickly amends, “I’m going to take her out right now.”

“Percy!” Annabeth barks. 

“If she says anything important, I’ll tell you,” he rapidly assures her, then he flees from the proximity of their stare-down to collect Diane. Vaguely, he recollects the two of them exiting the ER, but he doesn’t budge from his cold war against Annabeth. 

“She’s responsible for hurting Travis. I do _ not _care who the fuck she is—”

“Did she order Lamia to go after Travis?! Did she cast the bleeding spell?! You’re so stupid, Connor,” Annabeth sneers. “You think you’re better than us because you live a safer life?”  


“Yes!” he snarls. “I made the smart decision. Can’t say the same for you.”

The moment the words leave his mouth, Connor knows he’s fucked. One does not pick a fight with Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, and expect to come out unscathed. 

She smiles, slow and terrifying. “I could care less if we get kicked out. I don’t think you realized that.”

In the next second, the left side of his face is on fire, and he’s on the floor. The inside of his cheek had caught on his teeth, and there’s the taste of copper dripping from his lips.

His cheekbone is gonna bruise. 

Oh, Annabeth is definitely paying for that. 

* * *

It’s only after they’re forced to leave by the ER staff that Connor realizes that Annabeth had completely and totally played him. He had refused to leave earlier, so she played him into getting himself kicked out in a spiteful and _ completely genius move. _

Theoretically, he knows that his brother’s condition won’t magically improve due to Connor’s proximity, and anyway, Mom is still waiting inside, but it still feels like a loss, both emotionally and egotistically speaking. The worry and anxiety is climbing up his throat and threatening to choke him, and he can’t even tell his best friend because he’d stupidly returned her slap. 

And to add insult to injury, the first people they see upon being escorted out of the ER are, of course, Percy and Diane. The two of them look grave—well, he’d like to assume that’s Diane’s normal face, but to see it on Percy is a bit alarming—and engrossed in their conversation.

But the moment Connor’s foot leaves the threshold of the hospital, even if Diane’s back is mostly turned to him, it’s as if an invisible sensor goes off in the back of her head. Connor can see her head give into the slightest turn in his direction before stonily turning back to face Percy. 

_ Ah, _ he remembers. _ She can sense other life forces. _

Percy and Diane exchange a few more words, and before long, Diane gives a perfunctory nod of her head and turns to leave. Awkwardly, Percy sticks out his hand. Even more awkwardly, after a few seconds, Diane takes it, and they perform the most uncertain handshake Connor has ever seen. She also gives him and Annabeth a dip of her head, then briskly walks past the cars lined up in the hospital’s parking lot. 

They follow her figure with their eyes until her feet leave the hospital grounds, and she’s no longer a distinct figure on the horizon. The last they see of her is a quick step disappearing around the corner of the building wrapped around the ER entrance. 

Percy whirls to Connor. “What the _ fuck _happened to your face, man?”

“What do you think,” Connor deadpans. Percy shakes his head and heads into the ER. Connor watches him through the automatic doors as he fills up a paper cup at the water dispenser and comes out again. 

The cup of water is thrust at him. “Hold it to your cheek,” Percy tells him. 

“What—oh, you froze it, that’s nice. Thanks.” The cup is biting to Connor’s touch, but he gratefully presses it against the bruise Annabeth gave him. 

“DId she tell you anything?” Annabeth asks.

Percy’s face turns grim. “Yes. Connor, you need to hear this.”

Connor sighs. “_ No. _”

“Con-man, I’m speaking to you as a bro—”

“Your bro says no—”

“The Kronos kids are missing,” Percy rushes out before Connor can block it out. He crosses his arms and looks at Connor in defiance. “I thought that you of all people would wanna know.”

Connor’s mouth dries. The cup of ice slips from his grasp and shatters into a million prisms on the ground with a dull thunk. 

“What?!” he hisses, just as Annabeth sharply says, “How does she know?”

“Well, she didn’t say how, but she’s probably been looking for them.” Percy shrugs. “It would explain the whole Alabaster-and-Lamia thing.”

“What the fuck,” Connor breathes. He runs a hand through his hair. God, he’d worked so hard to gel down that mop of shit this morning, and things just went to—well, shit. “What the fuck.”

“Connor, out of the three of us, you’d know why they were disappearing. Have any ideas?”

Connor grits his teeth. He doesn’t want to think. The world is tilting on its axis. The left side of his face is boiling with pain. “The fuck… I don’t know... “

“The monsters on the Titan army could be exacting revenge?” Annabeth suggests. “It’s been six years since the Titan War. Monsters would have regenerated to full strength by now.”

“No.” Connor shakes his head. “The minor gods would’ve noticed something, now that they have to monitor their kids to claim them.”

“Yeah, well, I made Olympus swear on the Styx that those demigods would be granted amnesty,” Percy says fiercely. “So either way, someone’s breaking their oath—”

“Between the minor gods and the Olympians,” Connor mumbles tiredly, “who do you think is arrogant enough to break that promise?”

“And besides,” Annabeth cuts in, “_ their _ kids aren’t at stake if they break their oath. _ We _aren’t at stake. MInor gods on the other hand…”

Connor hawks back and spits on the cement. His saliva comes out tinged with red. “Fuck the gods,” he snarls, and before he can second-guess himself, the world whites out, and thunder crashes down all around them. There’s ringing in his eyes and his ears, and the strain in his throat is telling him he’s screaming, but he can’t hear himself—

He’s half-splayed out on the ground and half-curled up on Annabeth’s lap when he comes to, and his ears are ringing with white noise. Percy’s frantic face hovers just over them, but he can’t hear the words his mouth is forming.

They look fine. Connor feels rage swell up in his chest like a balloon. 

(Later, he learns that there had, in fact, been an abnormally brilliant arc of lightning, followed by the thunder, the loudest in recent years. The arc had struck heart-stoppingly close to the hospital’s electrical supply, which would have caused a widespread power outage bad enough to cut power from the intensive care unit. Which was where Travis lay.

_ Zeus. That fucker. _)

He breathes in. Makes a mental note to sacrifice his dinner to Thanatos later. Breathes out. 

Perhaps he’ll speak to Diane Stone after all.

_ But it ends there _, he promises himself. The moment he satiates his curiosity, he can tell Percy. He’ll let the two-time Hero of Olympus take care of matters; he was less likely to get incinerated. 

_ It will end there. _  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i saw this post that said something like "show writers make characters cough up blood when they wanna show that the character is injured but refuse to commit to any concrete injury that they need to address later" and i laughed so hard. of course, my next instinct was to google its causes. 
> 
> thanks, the untamed fandom. yes, i am advertising mo dao zu shi. i love my ancient chinese fantasy gays. *clenches fist* wangxian... 
> 
> tl;dr of this chapter:  
connor: hoes mad hoes mad hoes mad


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor should really learn how to make promises he can keep. In the meantime, he's trying to decide if he should save the people who had betrayed him and Camp Half-Blood.

“Don’t come by later,” Connor tells Mom. “I’m meeting Diane Stone.”

Mom arches an eyebrow at him from the other side of Travis’ bed. “So you’ve forgiven her? That’s new.”

“This isn’t about forgiveness.” Connor uncrosses his arms and places a hand on his brother’s forehead. It’s still clammy and cold from the blood loss. “I just need to clear up some things.”

The gods are hiding something. Zeus may be wrathful, but normally not  _ that  _ wrathful; Connor is, by all technicalities, his grandson and one of the more prominent heroes of both the Second Titan and Giant Wars. And the fact that lightning and thunder had struck so fast and with such intensity—it only meant that someone had been listening in. The gods didn’t have an automatic “Punish All Blasphemous Sentiments” function; if they had managed to not notice their own children scheming a coup against them, how could they notice this of all things?

Of course, all of Connor’s assumptions are circumstantial. But given his past experience with gods, his gambit is likely. Very likely. 

“Connor, I just want you to be careful,” his mother warns. She stands up and walks over to sit beside him. “I understand your reasons for leaving the demigod world. I was  _ so happy _ . Especially after Travis went to New Rome. It was like... It was like watching him step out of a prison and straight into a pet store. Demigod university, my ass. More like indoctrination.”

“If it leads to anything,” he promises, “you have full permission to beat me up.” 

“It better not,” Mom snaps, and she takes ahold of his ear. Connor bites back a yelp. “I don’t want a repeat of your graduation from Camp Half-Blood. Gods, that was a  _ nightmare  _ to deal with.”

“Yes, yes, I promise,” he whimpers in pain. When she lets go, he pouts at her. “I already got punched, nearly stabbed, nearly sliced, and slapped today. I’m pretty sure I forgot some things. Have mercy on me.”

“Mercy.” She gives the snobbiest scoff she can and flips her hair. Connor gets a mouthful of it. “I’ll give you money. In case what won’t happen happens.”

“That’s a paradox,” he points out. Her arm moves back with the threat of pinching his ear again, and he ducks. 

“Don’t get smart with me, you little—” She breaks off with a sigh and drops her arm.

“Take care of this dumbass.” He gives his brother’s temple a light nudge. It lolls to the side, and Travis’ mouth falls open to let a stream of saliva flow.  _ Yuck.  _ “Have you heard from Katie?”

“She’s still stuck on the line from Ohio. She’ll be here by midnight at the earliest.”

Connor clicks his tongue in disappointment. “Aww. Tell Kitty-Kat I miss her.” He gives his mom the biggest puppy eyes and the brattiest pout he can for the briefest second before schooling his face back into seriousness. “Please give her that exact look.”

“Like  _ fuck  _ I will.”

He winks at her, still maintaining his poker face. “Love you. Ma. Maternal unit.”

“Get the fuck out, Zygote Two.” But his mother is laughing, so Connor counts that as his victory as he flees his mother’s hurled coat. He closes the door just as it makes contact with the door. 

Now, to business. Connor feels filthy, his clothes having been put through enough water, ichor, and blood for him to look like a murderer. He needs to head to his dorms, but just the mere thought of the walk makes his head ache, even though it’s barely ten minutes away from the university hospital. 

In the corridor, he heaves the biggest sigh his lungs can manage and heads towards the vending machine. He punches in the code for the can of iced coffee and shoves in the change in his pocket, which had miraculously not fallen out during the fight with Lamia. 

Once his purchase hits the bottom of the dispenser with a clang, he grabs the cans and crosses the hallway to the elevator with long strides. He pops one open and downs three mouthfuls, one after the other, relishing in the way his blood sings and his heart pumps faster. As for the other three cans, he shoves one each into his front pockets and clutches the last in his opposite hand. 

He’s going to need all of them to get through tonight. 

* * *

Once he’s back in the dorms, Connor leans against the door behind him and stares listlessly into the small space of his room. He’d finished packing just this morning before the graduation ceremony after weeks of procrastination, cramming, and sleepless nights, so the sides of his room were stockpiled with cardboard boxes filled with his furniture and personal belongings. 

On the right side of the room, his bed had been pushed back to the far corner by the boxes. It’s stripped bare, down to the cushions, and the only thing that’s laying on it now is Connor’s mini suitcase, filled with his favorite books and toiletries.

His chest hurts. He woke up this morning, elated to get packing over with already and go home with his mom and Travis, and here he was now, about to risk the safety he’d struggled to maintain for the past couple of years. 

Connor grabs his toiletry kit, his towel, and a black pouch and heads out to the common showers before his mind starts going more places. 

When he gets to the showers, he locks the bathroom door behind him and turns on the water to the hottest temperature in the first cubicle.  _ No more assholes to drain the hot water,  _ he gleefully thinks to himself as he watches the mist rise.  _ Though I wish I had it all to myself under a nicer situation…  _

He yanks open a black pouch and places the glass prism in his grasp directly under the bathroom light. A rainbow blooms from the translucent surface and arches directly into the mist. 

For the briefest second, Connor’s breath catches in his chest, and he is unable to move his eyes from the sight. 

Then before he can second-guess himself, his other hand reaches into the black pouch and hurls out a drachma. It disappears through the mist, and the thunk it should’ve made on the floor never echoes on the porcelain. 

“O, Iris, goddess of the rainbow, accept my offering,” he manages breathlessly, almost stumbling over the first few syllables. “Show me Diane Stone, daughter of Thanatos, wherever she is.”

The rainbow shimmers and expands into an iridescent plate, all the while bobbing in the air. Connor shoves the glass prism back into the pouch and buries his face in his hands. 

He swallows. Inhales through his nose, huffs out the air through his mouth. 

The moment he gathers the courage to look up, the iridescent plate clears into a defined image. Diane Stone’s marble-carved face appears before him, and he suppresses a flinch. 

He had honestly ( _ foolishly _ ) thought that he’d never have to use the items inside that pouch. 

Upon focusing on his face, Diane gives a near imperceptible arch of her eyebrow and stands up. 

Walks to the bathroom. At the end of the wiggling train car. 

Connor nearly facepalms. Of course she’d be in a public place. Public transport, of all things.  _ A train.  _ He slouches a bit, hoping that no unlucky mortal catches sight of his face. 

Still, as the IM moves with Diane’s fce, from what he can see, the train car is nearly empty. It would be, at this hour. The few other people that are present are either sleeping or engrossed in their phones. 

Quickly, deftly, Diane steps into the cramped bathroom and slides the door shut. She gently puts down the seat of the toilet cover with the edge of her feet, then turns around to face Connor before sitting on the makeshift chair. 

“You have  _ Kavene _ ,” he says by way of greeting. 

This time, Diane’s eyebrow really rises. 

They both know full well that  _ Kavene  _ is with Connor. After it had fallen out of Lamia’s disintegrating body, Diane picked it up from the floor and handed it to him. 

“Come to my dorms. I need my brother’s dagger back,” he continues curtly. 

“Your brother’s dagger... “ she trails off. Her dark eyes are intent on his face. 

He holds her gaze a little longer, and his lips thin with tension. Her eyes shift down to them, and her brow furrows. 

“... I don’t know where your dorms are,” she finally says. 

Connor makes a derisive sound. “Please. With your tracking powers, you could just keep your invisible antenna for my life force or whatever.”

To that, she gives no reply. Connor dismisses the IM with a wave of his hand. 

He takes out the cans of coffee, now lukewarm, out of his pockets and sets them on the ground. Then one by one, he peels off his filthy clothes: his muddied shoes, drenched socks, stained white button-down, and dusty black slacks. When he’s only left in his underwear, he carefully undoes the strap of his watch, making sure to not let the five-inch lockpick fall carelessly to the ground. He places the watch on the messy pile, all the while running his thumb over the minute engraving on the side of the lockpick. 

קאַווענע.  _ Kavene _ . 

Beckendorf’s delicate calligraphy haunts him the more he stares at it. He can almost see the hands that made the indentations like phantoms over his, but this time, Beckendorf’s hands are agitated and jerky as they work. 

_ Connor, don’t you know how I lost my life? You were the first one to ask where I was, but don’t you know how I lost my life? Don’t you know _ —

Connor drops the dagger-turned-lockpick on top of the pile as well. He steps out of his underwear and into the shower. 

* * *

His skin is scrubbed pink and raw. But the cool air feels good on it after the endless steam that poured out of the showerhead. It had felt even better to watch the shit-like mix of golden ichor-dust and rusty blood slip into the drain. 

The moment he places a foot in front of his dirty clothes, he realizes that he forgot to bring clean clothes. 

The dumbass he was today. The price he paid for coming in second in his entire class. 

After a resounding smack to his forehead, he picks up the filthy pile (he’s going to burn this one when he gets home), his toiletry kit, and slips into his slide-ons with only a towel hanging on his waist. The dumbass he truly was today. He plods over to the door and unlocks the door—

To reveal Diane’s face. He nearly bowls her over, and when he catches himself, her eyes are directly level with his mouth. 

Fuck, he hadn’t realized that she was so tall. When he ran into girls, their faces usually ran smack-dab into his chest. He would know—he spent a fair amount of time washing make-up off his sweaters. 

“I’m not shameless enough to ask where your room is,” she states, but there’s a hurry in the way she closes off her sentence. It almost sounds like she’s defensive. 

He doesn’t move. Instead, he laughs. “I didn’t ask you,” he jabs. He’s been caught in more incriminating positions, in more embarrassing situations. By now, he’s learned to coast along the cresting of his heartbeat and the rush of blood to his ears. 

He tilts his head to look at her, but statue that she is, only her eyeballs track his movements. She makes no move, either. 

Frankly, Connor refuses to leave. He could do this all night, just wait until something about his presence or his body or his proximity provokes Diane. He doesn’t try biting back his smile as he tilts his head further down so that she’s forced to meet his eyes. 

“Like what you see?” he murmurs. 

His mischief isn’t in good humor, and he’s sure Diane knows it by the way her shoulders stiffen as she inhales the air they share. 

They’re close. So close. 

Connor feels the urge to throttle her until she reverses time and fixes Travis. 

Something maniacal must show in his expression because Diane concedes; just like a dog who’s lost the fight, she hides her gaze with a sweep of her lashes and backs away from him, one step at a time. 

Connor shoves past her and strides through the hallway as cockily as he can while shirtless and wearing slides. 

Thankfully, only a handful of people are still here, and they’re scattered all throughout the building. The two of them make quite a sight—a questionable one, at that. Connor tries not to think of all the lewd suggestions his floormates would make if they were here. 

He shoves open his door and carelessly drops his things on the bed again. He turns to the boxes and sticks his arms into them to dig for his packed clothes. 

When he settles on a new set of clothes, he turns around and places a hand on his towel. Then he stops.

Good thing he turned around. Diane stands on the opposite side of the room, facing the door she had apparently closed very quietly. 

“Are you seriously going to stay in the room while I’m changing?” he says in exasperation. Did this girl seriously not know any social cues?!

Without missing a beat, she replies, “I’m not looking at you. There might be others outside.”

If he were any less casual about his body, he definitely would’ve forced her outside. The building is practically barren! But he has no more energy to waste on something as petty as this, so he rolls his eyes and undoes the towel at his waist. If she sneaks a peek at him… Well, that’s on her conscience, not his. Besides, it’s not like he’s got anything to be ashamed of. 

When Diane speaks again, he’s in the middle of tugging on his jeans. “It’s been quite a while. Can I turn around now?”

“What are you so impatient for?” he grunts. The elastic fabric at the garter had caught on the top of his thigh. What the fuck, did he gain weight?

“I’m not impatient. You’re just taking exceptionally long to put on clothes,” she calmly replies. 

“Mind your own business,” he bites out. “I unfortunately don’t have any powers that magically make my clothes spoof onto my body.”

She keeps silent after that. As petty revenge, after Connor manages to pull his pants on, he makes no indication that he’s fully dressed. He simply reaches over to his bed and pops open his second can of iced coffee. 

It’s silent in his room for a long while, only punctuated by the occasional big gulp of the caffeinated drink. 

Connor watches her. In the dead air of the room, Diane barely seems to move, her posture unyielding and flawless—almost  _ beau monde _ , which is ridiculous, because demigods are  _ fighters,  _ not  _ models _ — despite the strain that her weight of her kopis must be bearing down on her shoulders. Their sheaths are bound to a pair of leather straps that form an “X” over her back and her chest, and the way they are secured against her frame pull her black shirt tighter against her chest and her waist, emphasizing the taper of her broad shoulders down to her waist and the strong arch of her back. 

At least she’s not standing with her feet perfectly together. Connor can spy the slight lean of her weight on her left foot, a small imperfection in the artist’s sculpture. He wonders how long it will take for other cracks in the surface, other fissures, to widen and show through. 

He also wonders how long it will take for her demigod’s hardwired ADHD to kick in. At this point, it’s taken too long. 

He lets out a loud sigh and takes a seat beside his unsaveable clothes. At the sound, Diane turns to peek at him, only to find him sitting cross-legged on his bed. 

“Were you seriously going to risk seeing me buck-ass nude?” he snips. 

She might be angry. Or she might be embarrassed. Connor can’t tell. He violently shakes the last drops of the second can into his mouth and drops it on the clothes pile. Another thing to dispose of. 

“One would think that, for all your accusations of my trying to watch you, you have been watching me instead,” she mildly returns, walking to stand in front of him. 

Ah shit, had she felt his gaze on her or something? He shrugs. No matter, it’s not as if he was staring at her in a pervy way. 

“ _ Kavene _ is with you,” she says, cutting straight to the chase. “You have no reason to call me here.”

“And yet you came.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Sorry for the confusion, by the way. IMs can be hacked by gods.”

He’s being a little shit, he knows. But is it so bad to want to see a reaction out of her, outside of the context of battle? She’s seen so much of him in the past few hours, and he’s feeling particularly vengeful after Travis. 

The lack of a workable response corners Diane. Her lips thin, and she has no choice but to ask, “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” He steeples his fingers. “Maybe an explanation.”

“I offered you one a while ago. You did not want it.”

“Well, now I want it. And besides, you said so yourself that if there was anything you could do to help, I was entitled to it.”

“You could have asked Percy.”

“You didn’t tell him much.”

“What makes you think I’ll tell you more?” she counters. He smiles.

“Didn’t I just say it a few seconds ago? Travis is my brother, not Percy’s. You have no obligation to him.”

“You are dragging this out.” Ah, there, a clipped tone. “I will tell you what you want to know.”

“Hmm.” Connor considers his options. “When and how did you realize that the demigods on the Titans’ side went missing?”

“I happened to encounter one of them—”

“Name and parentage.”

She turns her hard flint eyes on him, and his grin wavers. “Given that you didn’t even remember me, I doubt that you’d remember her.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

The bow of Diane’s lip tugs up in a bare ghost of what Connor imagines would have been a sneer. “Rosie Liang. Daughter of Morpheus.”

Connor brightens up. “My baby! How is she—”

“Your baby—!” Diane stops herself and presses her lips together. “Your  _ baby  _ is missing, Connor Stoll.”

He smiles and tries to say something, but nothing comes out.

Rosie… Missing?

Numbers rush through his head, and his breath stutters. “She’s… turning eleven this year,” he softly says. 

“In four months, to be exact.” Diane rubs her hand across the dark shadows under her eyes. “Echidna took her.”

“Echidna? What the fuck,” he whispers. “Isn’t Echidna Zeus’ pet now?” He remembers Percy’s countless retellings of his fall from the St. Louis Arch; he’d personally always found it odd that Typhon’s mate, the supposed Mother of Monsters, referred to Zeus as her lord. 

“At the time, I didn’t know that they were on the lookout for Kronos kids.” She pauses for a brief second, then forges on, “I met Rosie by chance while she was walking home from school, and I was alarmed because she was alone. I asked her where her guardian was, and I was somehow persuaded into treating her to a slice of cake.”

“A slice of cake?” Connor parrots.

“This happened a little less than three weeks ago. Rosie wanted me to buy her favorite strawberry shortcake that was on the way home from her school since she didn’t know when she would see me again.” Diane swallows. “She wanted to celebrate with me before I went away again. Even if it was five months early.”

Again… Connor would assume that the referenced “first time” was when she left Camp. “I didn’t know you and Rosie were so close.”

It’s only by virtue of their proximity that Connor catches the disappointment flashing in Diane’s eyes. Her lips part, but she’s unable to form words.

Then finally, she manages in a dry tone, “Why am I even surprised.”

Connor’s jaw tenses. He’s on edge.  _ Rosie…  _ “What happened next?”

“This is where things start to get a little confusing, even for me.  _ Fuck _ ,” Diane exhales, but she squares herself up again. “We lined up at the cafe for the strawberry shortcake she wanted, but just as I was about to pay, Echidna walked in and joined the back of the line. 

“I did not want Rosie to witness to any more fighting—she’s seen enough of that in her lifetime. So I carried her with me to the bathroom and made both of us invisible, and when we passed Echidna on the way out, she gave no indication that she had sensed us.”

“Monsters can  _ smell _ . Invisibility is useless unless you’re in fast-paced fights.”

Diane shook her head. “I don’t make myself invisible. I just make the Mist do the work. I can will myself to disappear from the physical world if I want. No smell, no touch, no taste. It was the only reason I decided to evade rather than kill.”

“So how the  _ fuck  _ did she go missing?!” Connor demands.

“I took her to a mall near her house so that her demigod scent would, to some degree, get masked by the mortals. Then she asked to use to use the restroom.”

Here, her voice falls flat. “I let her. After three minutes, she still didn’t come out, so I went in to check on her. Except that there was no Rosie to check on.”

His heart is hammering in his chest, and it’s thundering all the way down in his gut. 

“Echidna was inside the restroom,” he states. 

“By the time I realized that she was, she’d somehow disappeared into thin air.”

The words sink in. He stares at her, heartbeat roaring in his ears and heat creeping at the edges of his vision. The tips of his fingers brush against the crushed velvet of the black pouch. 

Before he can think about it, his hand plunges inside and wraps around a familiar hilt.

Diane’s eyes dart down at the movement, and just as the blade of his dagger hits the light, she tackles him. Her hands land on his wrists, pinning the hand holding  _ Flinkayt _ to the bed. 

“LET GO!” he yells. His legs come up kicking towards her solar plexus.

Grunting, she pitches herself forward, forcing Connor onto his back with her weight, and in the brief second her feet lift off the ground, she tucks them up towards her core and stomps down on the tops of his thighs, pinning them to the bed as well. 

“Were you going to stab me, Connor Stoll?!” she sneers into his face. Her heavy-lidded eyes gleam brightly, too brightly, and it’s in that moment that Connor realizes that she’s holding back tears. She blinks rapidly to clear her vision and bears down more weight on him. “You think I don’t know it’s my fault?! If I hadn’t been so careless, Rosie would be safe. Your brother wouldn’t be in the hospital. So go ahead, blame me, I know it’s my fault—”

“Shut up!” he screams, and he throws his head back to smash it into her nose. A satisfying crack pops above him, and he turns his wrists under hers to throw her off him. His hands shove her off his hips, and as her head cracks against the wooden floor, he wastes no time grabbing the collar of her jacket. 

Her head hangs limply as he lifts her off the floor and her nose is definitely broken judging by the crook of its bridge, but her eyes are defiant. Even the flow of bright red cascading over her lips harden her face. 

“Do you really mess up everything you come across?” he hisses in her face. “Rosie’s just  _ ten,  _ gods know what the  _ fuck’s happening to her— _ ”

“You… What right do you have to blame me?! You turned your back on all of them once you left Camp—”

“Didn’t you just say it was your fault?!” he spits. “Make up your mind!” Air seems to be condensing above him. He takes a few desperate gasps before he threateningly bangs her head against the ground. “That broken nose isn’t payment enough.”

“If you’re going to break in my face until it’s unrecognizable, go ahead,” she growls. “But don’t you ever, ever! Think that your hands are snow-white! You called Rosie your baby? You refuse to even go back to Camp!” Her head goes limp again. “If you want to vent on me,  _ go ahead. _ But at least I have made attempts to fix things.”

Theoretically, she could throw him off her right now. Her arms hang free by her sides, and his balls are within perfect kneeing range. Instead, though, she’s glaring at him, daring him to land that first hit on her pale face. 

Fuck! His fist lands perfectly on her cheekbone, and the wooden floor comes up to meet the other cheek when he drops her and rises to his feet. He strides over to his boxes and begins digging. 

With his back turned to her, he bitterly thinks that she didn’t even make a sound of pain. Were his hits really that weak?

“Explain to me how finding Alabaster is somehow a solution,” he says curtly. 

There’s a shift of fabric behind him as she sits up. “I captured and questioned monsters afterwards. And they all said the same thing. They never ate the demigods, only dropped them off at various locations. So they’re being held somewhere.”

Connor hauls out a tactical backpack and some clothes, too. “How do we know they haven’t been killed off yet?”

“Rosie has been sending me dreams lately. But that’s all she can do. She’s not powerful enough to make any sort of coherent communications system. And I talked to Uncle about it.”

“Uncle?”

“One of Lord Uncle Hypnos’ children has also gone missing. He confided in me and my father that at around the same time demigods started disappearing, hunts for Alabaster have begun as well.”

It all really led back to Alabaster. Connor lets loose a string of curses under his breath. “So they’re using the demigods as bait to lure him out.”

“And the bidders for his capture must have high stakes in this. Otherwise, Lamia would not have gone after Alabaster. Apparently, a few months after his exile, he discovered a spell that let him bind monsters to the mortal realm, unable to return to Tartarus or resurrect ever again.”

He slams the backpack down on the ground and starts rolling up his clothes. Angry as he is right now, he needs to save space in his bag, and he needs to fold them properly for that. “So it’s really the big guys up there behind all of this, huh.”

“Nothing is for sure.” But they both know who the most likely culprit is. “Alabaster used to call them the ‘Divine Mafia.’”

“Mafia, huh?” Connor grumbles. “ I’ll be the Michael to their Tattaglias.”

“Then you aren’t any better than them.” A note of hesitation slips into her voice. “What… What are you doing?”

“Clearly, I’m packing my things so that I can camp out here,” Connor sarcastically says. “What do you think?”

“You were the one who said that you wanted nothing to do with our world. I never said—”

“Well, unless you plan to snatch Alabaster from under the noses of the Divine Mafia alone, I assume you want to succeed on your quest.”

The word sounds odd on his lips. He hasn’t so much as uttered it in years. 

“And besides,” Connor sighs, zipping his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder, “you’ve been pretty much fucking up peaceful lives. I think I should be your last victim.”

“Should you,” Diane intones, voice rasping like gravel grinding together. 

“Yes.” He grabs  _ Flinkayt _ and  _ Kavene _ , now both in lockpick form, and gives them a little twirl before pinning them to his wrist with his watch. Once he’s made sure that they’re both secure, he turns to Diane. “Better get some ambrosia for your cheek and nose.”

“I don’t have any with me. Besides, minor injuries needn’t warrant them.”

He bristles.  _ Minor injuries.  _

“Fine,” he huffs. “We need to stock up on demigod supplies. You can catch me up on other details on the way.”

Diane frowns. “Where do you propose we get them?”

Automatically, he smirks and gives a careless scoff. But inside, his heart is thundering with meaning and anticipation. 

“Where else? Camp Half-Blood.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the reference about michael and the tattaglias comes from the "godfather" movie. basically, michael, despite being reluctant to accept the role of being his family's don, is forced to in the wake of the war the tattaglias wage on his family. it's such a good movie ughi love the horse scene if yall know what im talking about
> 
> at this point, connor stoll is honestly fun but really hard to write,,,, it's like
> 
> connor: im never going back to the demigod world ever again  
travis:  
connor: but i still love my friends from there it's just that i'd rather never see them again  
annabeth:  
connor: even if they need help, fuck that i need my life yo  
percy:  
connor: i miss them tho! rosie is my baby  
rosie:  
connor: also who the fuck r u  
diane:  
connor: stop fucking up things but no i dont wanna help  
diane:  
connor: wait nvm guess i will  
diane:  
diane:  
diane:
> 
> ALSO, INTRODUCING ROSIE!! i just needed that found family vibe, you know,,, and some future domestic child fluff. rosie is baby. *gleefully updates tags*


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their mission isn't much of a hero's quest. All the same, it begins as it always does—making monsters bleed ichor and trying to not get eaten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning/s: fight scene at the end of the chapter, so some mild violence

For seven years, Connor completely forgot what it was like to be the baby of the family. 

Not that Travis has ever felt like an older brother to him—they have always been equals, partners-in-crime, twins whose births were unfortunately separated by some mythical circumstances. But his mother had a more physical affection for him, swiping him up in her arms and calling him “Zygote Two.” The compliments and inside jokes were always more reserved for Zygote One. 

Once they got to Camp, though, the fondness of being swaddled was immediately replaced by the thrill of having some sort of superiority over the younger campers, especially the gullible ones in Cabin Eleven. Connor has always liked that in being an older sibling: control, influence, and leeway to mess around as much as he wanted. Luke’s betrayal just engraved that responsibility into stone—a stone as hard as diamond. 

Now that it wasn’t wartime, older sibling responsibilities were much more pleasant to face head-on. 

(Connor wanted to erase those memories from his consciousness.)

Today, his task was to entertain Rosie Liang, the six-year-old daughter of Morpheus. Technically, she  _ did  _ have her own cabin, but she would’ve been the only occupant, so she slept in Cabin Eleven. Also, Chiron deemed her too young to participate in activities like wall-climbing and alternately assigned Connor and Travis to babysitting duties. 

Connor would’ve been bummed by it, seeing as he had to miss seeing the others get their asses whipped by the lava wall, but Rosie was surprisingly entertaining. For a daughter of Morpheus, she sure as hell was a firecracker. Right now, she was rambling off in sort-of baby talk about one of the dreams she had accidentally entered the previous night. 

“Cecil was all red and stuff, then Lou Ellen—the girl with the really colorful hair, I want to have hair like that too!”

“Then Lou Ellen what?” Connor asked benevolently, patting more wet sand on top of her belly. 

She giggled—or rather, her head did, and the rest of her body tried to, but she was half-buried under sand—and continued, “Lou Ellen did this thing where she slapped the wall and tried to kiss Cecil!”

Connor frowned, blinking a few times, trying to imagine the (frankly blurry) image that Rosie was painting for him. Then—

_ Oh, Cecil, you romantic fucker. _ He cackled. How typical of Cecil to actually have a dream about getting  _ kabedon _ -ed by his crush. Connor knew there was a reason why his pile of  _ shoujo  _ manga had suddenly increased. 

Well, he couldn’t fault Cecil. Lou Ellen was the embodiment of a cool badass with her neon-and-black punk vibe, not to mention that her mom was the literal goddess of magic. You couldn’t get any grungier than that. 

He told Rosie just as much, but she just wrinkled her nose. “Won’t you get frightened if someone you like like just suddenly—_whoosh!_—their hand beside your face?”

“Being slammed against the wall by someone you like like is a noble aspiration, Rosie,” he said gravely. 

“But whyyyyy,” she whined, feet threatening to break the sand mound on top of her. “It’s scary. And besides, doesn’t Cecil know that kissing Lou Ellen will give her cooties?”

“Who’s to say that Lou Ellen won’t be the one giving Cecil cooties!” he said in defense of his half-brother. Rosie stuck her tongue out at him. 

“Girls don’t have cooties. Boys do,” she told him haughtily. “It’s why girls grow up pretty. Boys grow up ugly.”

“Are you calling me ugly?!”

“Lou Ellen’s gonna be ugly now, Cecil kissed her,” she sulked.

“Wasn’t that only in a dream though?”

She paused and seemed to consider it for a moment. “Well… Isn’t that even worse? Her  _ soul  _ will have cooties, since it was a dream!”

Connor was properly baffled. “What?”

But before he could ask Rosie to expound on what in Zeus’s blue skies she meant by that, his ears picked up the sound of rapidly shifting sand. The feet trampling the grains under their soles were in a rush, and the moment Connor turned his head, he was met with a pair of tightly laced up combat boots. 

No one in their right mind actually  _ wore  _ combat boots in the midst of the summer weather, even though the weather in Camp was regulated. He turned to look up, but pale hands suddenly reached out to grab Rosie. The sand mound over her body crumbled into pieces as she was lifted. 

“ _ Jie! _ ” Rosie cried. She made grabby hands towards the figure until she was settled against the crook of an elbow. “They wouldn’t tell me where you were!”

“Rosie—” A breathless cry, a relieved utterance that quickly turned harsh— “I keep telling you not to gossip about other people’s dreams.”

“I’m sorry,  _ Jie, _ ” Rosie whined. “Mr. Connor pulled it out of me.”

The feet turned to him. 

Then they turned away. 

The humidity sticking to Connor skin turned cold like the temperature around him had dropped. Around the booted feet, the ground quivered once more, but this time from an invisible force. 

For a brief second, the tremble of the earth beneath them held its breath—and settled again. 

Heat began climbing up Connor’s nape again from under his collar once more. Stunned, he trailed his gaze up the black laces and the legs (Were they clothed or not? Connor honestly couldn’t tell.), all the way up to the face. 

Instead, his eyes were met with the Sun that was shining directly above her head, and tears quickly brimmed over. It was painful, it was painful. The agony made him stubborn, and he curiously (stupidly) opened his eyes towards the glare. 

Somewhere, far away, another set of steps came thundering towards them. They were shouting her name.  _ Her  _ name. Rosie whined, too, about not seeing her, her blubber switching between “ _ Jie! _ ” and—

Something else.  _ Her  _ name.

Connor kept his eyes open against the glaring Sun until the rays dug their talons into his eyeballs and tore them apart and  _ HE WAS IN PAIN, JOLTING _ —

* * *

He’s awake for real, this time around. His eyeballs feel oversensitized, and at the first hint of light, he groans and squeezes his eyes shut. Honestly, it would have been better if he could lie to himself about his pain only being a hangover, but only his  _ eyeballs _ hurt.

Christ, he hasn’t woken up from a demigod dream in quite a while. 

When the flashing pain behind his eyes subsides, he gathers the courage to sneak a little peek at the window that he’d pressed his cheek against. He only manages to glimpse a blur of green and cotton candy pink skies before the pain lancing through his skull forces his eyes shut again.

“What time is it?” he slurs, wincing at how his voice sounds. He hopes he doesn’t look as bad as he feels—he wouldn’t have been surprised if he reached into his mouth and found a chunk of sandpaper in lieu of his tongue. 

“Just before six.”

“The correct answer is ‘Time for you to get a watch,’” Connor grumbles. 

“You have a watch.”

“That’s not the point—ah, whatever.” He clicks his tongue and petulantly rolls over to lean on his opposite shoulder. 

He feels Diane stand up, and for the next few minutes, he lets his eyes grow swollen with fatigue once again. But his position is too uncomfortable for the darkness to take him completely: his back hurts, his neck hurts, the seat hurts, his feet hurt. Every little jolt and sway of the train jars him. No matter how much he shifts his position or stretches his limbs, he’s still too long, too awkward to avail of the minimal comfort offered by the train chair. 

When he feels Diane settle back down beside him, he reluctantly accepts the fact that sleep is going to be elusive for the rest of the day and opens his eyes. 

Only to be met with a cup of steaming hot coffee. 

“Is it black?”

“I brought five cups of milk and three packets of sugar.”

“Good. Very good. Perfect, full marks.” He unwraps his arms from around his backpack and places it down on the train floor.  _ God,  _ his shoulders ache like a bitch. 

He takes the condiments from her hands and dumps them into the black depths, watching with satisfaction as white from the bottom of the cup and turns the liquid burnt-brown. By the time he takes a sip, the coffee is so overloaded with sugar that despite his lethargy, electricity courses through his blood. 

A sudden shiver overcomes him at the sensation. “Oh, fuck, that’s good,” Connor sighs, and dumps a fourth of the cup into his mouth. 

Beside him, Diane is readjusting the latches that bind her  _ kopis  _ sheaths to the leather straps she wore yesterday (a while ago?). Unlike him, she’s wide awake, or at least as wide awake as she can look with her half-moon eyelids and gray eyebags. Still, her actions are smooth and precise as they were in the fight against Lamia, the iron control ever present; she doesn’t even seem to sweat under her leather jacket despite the dawning heat that came with the sun rising. 

After they’d talked last night, the two of them barely exchanged a word even as they settled in the train for the overnight trip to Long Island. Diane was clearly not one for casual conversation, and Connor’s grudge against all things Greek-related didn’t help the situation. So for once, Connor’s urge to run his mouth for hours on end was stifled, and he busied himself in his thoughts.

Now, though, it’s back. Connor drains the cup all the way down until about halfway before he speaks. “Did anything happen while I passed out?”

Diane’s eyes moves from her dutiful movements to his pocket.

Realization dawns on him. “Aw, fuck,” he groans. “My mother is going to kill me before any monster can.”

_ “If it leads to anything,” he promises, “you have full permission to beat me up.” _

Diane says, “You came here of your own volition.”

Connor understands the words she leaves unsaid.  _ Don’t pin this on me. Again.  _

He scoffs. “If I hadn’t come with, you’d be jumping all over the country trying to evade  _ them  _ without any supplies. Or even a little ambrosia or nectar.”

“My swords are bulky enough.”

“All it takes is one mistake, Diane Stone,” he says. “One mistake and the lack of supplies at hand to end your life.”

“Yes.”

“Do you even have money with you?” he asks flatly. 

“You should answer your mother,” she smoothly evades. “Then dispose of your phone. We’ll get off this stop. Your phone call will alert monsters.”

“Are you seriously telling me to call my mother at the cost of being chased and possibly being eaten?” he says, aghast. 

She looks him dead in the eye. “You have the chance to say your goodbyes. Don’t waste it.”

Diane rises from her seat and straps the sheaths back onto her back. Connor wonders what the mortals around them see. Bondage harnesses? Badminton rackets? 

“I’ll wait near the doors,” she tells him, then she turns on her heel smoothly like she’s an intangible shadow and not a living, breathing thing with volume and mass. 

Connor squints against the glare of the rising sun, delaying the inevitable with the blur of grasslands and distant forests. Still, as the minutes tick by, the phone in his pocket grows heavier and heavier. His hands start twitching for something to do, to hold, and when he’s unable to repress the fear anymore, he grabs at his phone and swipes across the latest of his mother’s missed calls. 

The ringtone doesn’t even go through two full loops before his mother picks up. “ _ Where are you?! _ ” she yells, and he inwardly says a few words of respect for his left eardrum. 

“What wouldn’t happen happened,” he states dully, picking at the denim of his black skinny jeans. “You can beat me up once we get home. As promised.”

“Connor Stoll, come home right now,” she thunders. 

“I can’t,” he sighs. “Not on my good conscience, mother dearest.”

“You can! For the sake of your mother’s peace of mind!”

“There are kids getting tortured, Ma. I just have to find the person capable of  _ deus ex machina _ -ing this entire mess then I’ll come home. Pro—”

“Don’t promise anything to me,” she snaps. “Your word means jack shit when your father is the god of thievery.”

Connor swallows past the sharp pang in his chest. “I’m sorry, Ma. Make sure Travis doesn’t do anything stupid. Like follow me or something. Tell Katie I said hi.”

“You better come home, Connor.” 

“I will—no, I’ll try my best.”

“Good. That’s good enough. I know your best.”

“Love you, Ma,” he says softly. 

“Come home first, Zygote Two.” Then she hangs up. 

Hastily, Connor tosses his phone onto the seat that Diane left empty and downed the rest of the coffee. The lump in his throat made it hard to swallow, but the sudden jolt of caffeine in his system held his tears in a vice grip. 

He takes a shaky breath. And stands up. 

Connor makes his way over to Diane. The train is slowing, and with every passing second, the line of Diane’s mouth tightens into something grim.

“Why so serious?” he asks dryly. 

“Prepare for anything,” is all she says before the train starts slowing to a rather abrupt stop. Connor grabs onto a nearby handrail and barely manages to not fall onto Diane. The fingers on his left hand deftly stretch down to fiddle the two lockpicks out of his watch’s wristband. 

The scenery is no longer a blurry patch of colors, and they’re now surrounded by an intricate maze of other train tracks. Behind them, a red train flits by in barely three seconds before it’s gone once more. 

Up ahead, Connor can already spot the station. It’s a simple concrete platform with only a curved roof to adorn it, no fancy shebangs and architecture to make it memorable. The only thing that sets it apart is the sheer volume of people crammed on top of that block, most of them carrying suitcases and donning loose shirts and short shorts—at most. 

_ Oh, Long Island. Long time no see.  _

“You see the girl with bright red hair?”

Connor follows Diane’s gaze. The girl in question is one of the people near the edge of the train platform—and she’s suckling on a dripping ice pop rather provocatively, and Connor finds his eyes glued to the hollow of her cheeks. 

“... Uh huh.”

Fingers snap thrice in quick succession in front of his face. The air shimmers, and what initially looked like a wig for an Ariel cosplay erupts into flames. And when Connor manages to move his eyes away from the (hm, super enticing) circle that her painted lips form around the ice pop, he looks down the hem of her fraying booty shorts. But instead of sleek and toned legs, he sees the gleam of a bronze leg and the stray hairs of a goat hind through the crowd. 

“Focus,” Diane snaps. “Did you leave your phone?”

“Yes.” Connor shakes his head. That was… a distracting display, to say the least. “Refund me for that, by the way.”

“Let’s get to Camp alive first.”

Underneath their feet, the train shudders to a stop. Above them, the speakers let out a pleasant  _ ding! _ The doors slide open in a smooth motion.

This is the problem: there is only one way to exit the train, and it’s the way to get onto the train.

Luckily, they’re a considerable distance away from the  _ empousa.  _ It buys Connor enough time to track her with his eyes as he and Diane get off the train, and as they push through the counterflow, they get a few precious seconds’ headstart.

But the moment the train doors opened, her eyes had already begun wandering. And the moment Connor chooses to blink, her gaze is on his in the next instant, and boom. She shoves past a man who looks like he’s at least a hundred and eighty pounds and  _ definitely not shovable for a girl that slim— _

Panic and excitement climb up Connor’s chest in equal parts.  _ Oh, fuck it’s real.  _

“GO!” he yells to Diane. 

She doesn’t need to be told twice; she grabs him by the wrist and parts the crowd with practiced ease and well-measured strength. It’s only by virtue of their significant height difference and the fact that she’s holding onto him that Connor doesn’t get left behind in the sudden surge of people. 

But her impossible pace also makes him lose sight of the  _ empousa.  _ “WHERE IS SHE?!” he shouts over the din of chattering passengers. 

They make it through the clogged waiting area and dash up the escalators like mad men. Diane is as silent as a stone the whole way, so Connor takes it upon himself to gasp out twice as much “excuse me’s” and “sorry’s” in between pants. His heart rate is accelerating through the roof—he’s not by any means unfit, but running treadmills in university gyms is wildly different from taking three, four steps at a time in an escalator while running away from a hot girl who wants to eat you in a not-sexy way. 

After the fourth and the last escalator, Connor risks a look over his shoulder. He just manages to catch a flash of faux-red hair before the sunlight glares into his vision. 

“Taxi!” Diane’s voice booms over the cacophony, breaking through Connor’s scrambled egg of a brain. He turns to see a bright yellow Prius brake right in front of them. 

The hairs on Connor’s nape prick up. 

And despite the fact that he hasn’t fought in so long, it’s hard to shake the lessons that had sunk into the very marrow of his bones from nearly a decade of training. He doesn’t have to look back before his fingers reach for  _ Flinkayt  _ and give it a quick twirl over his middle finger. In rhythm with Diane, he opens the passenger door at the same time as she opens the door to the back row. 

“Where to—”

Connor lodges the transformed dagger in the telkhine’s throat, the muscles in his forearm trembling as he watches a blotchy,  _ human _ face stretch morbidly into a dog snout before crumbling like sand. 

Diane slides her leather jacket off her shoulders and flings it onto the seat to cover the pool of golden dust. Connor clambers over the gearshift, closing the door with his foot, and promptly steps on the gas. 

“Did you not sense that he wasn’t mortal?!” he pants through the adrenaline. 

She looks at him through the rearview mirror. “You had it handled,” is all she says, before she rests her chin on her hand and looks out the window. 

“Where’s the  _ empousa _ ?” he demands.

“A good few hundred meters behind us.”

But, as mere peasants, they are still subject to the constraints of the mortal conditions of New York—particularly traffic. Connor doesn’t even get to enjoy swerving lanes like a madman before he’s met with a literal blockade of cars. 

“What the f—” He slams his hand down on the horn, but the two middle-aged men arguing over the crash scene of their cars don’t seem to care. 

“Incoming!” 

The backglass over Diane’s head shatters. Connor nearly breaks his back whirling around in his seat, but by the time he looks over his shoulder, Diane is out of the seat and on her stomach on top of the car trunk. Her hand is dripping fresh blood as it clutches the frame of the window tighter and tighter. 

“Diane!” he cries, moving to undo his seatbelt. “What the fuck?!”

“Mn, I got this,” she says calmly, too calmly, in fact, for someone just barely hanging on the back of a car, and Connor’s anxiety doubles at her nonchalant tone. 

“Your hand is  _ fucking  _ bleeding!” he yells.

“I’m trying to save you from getting eaten,” she replies. Her other arm, stretched behind her back, suddenly slams down a figure onto the trunk beside her. 

Diane’s lucky they’re at the back of the traffic blockade. With no hesitation, she launches herself back into the car. The  _ empousa  _ lands on top of her, but instead of going for her neck, her eyes are drawn towards Connor, who’s still watching the entire fight with wide eyes. In a blur, Connor is pinned to the driver’s seat, and all he can look at is those gods-twice-blessed cheekbones of hers, even as her eyes flutter shut and she leans in—

And coughs out a fresh bout of golden dust right onto Connor’s mouth. The  _ empousa _ ’s head is yanked back by Diane, who plunges  _ Flinkayt  _ into the side of her neck and drags it all the way through,  _ harakiri  _ style. The body topples over onto Connor’s lap, slowly dissolving into even more golden dust. 

Diane, however, stays clean. Hanging from her fist is the  _ empousa _ ’s head, face still frozen in that seductive stare that nearly lured Connor to his death. Her other fist is wrapped around his dagger so tightly that her knuckles have turned paper white. 

Up ahead, the car in front of him turns off its red backlights and begins moving. Connor doesn’t even have time to process the tremors running through his body before his hand moves to the gear shift and pushes it into the forward gear. 

Beside him, Diane flungs the head into the glass-covered back seat almost disdainfully and stretches a leg over into the passenger seat. The car jumps a little when she plops down and buckles herself up. 

Connor dares to look at her hands. There’s small shards of glass embedded in her fingers, and there’s blood running down and caking her nailbeds. 

Finally, his mouth regains the ability to move. “There’s uh—” He clears his throat and tries again. “There might be tissue in the glove compartment.”

She reaches forward and opens it up. Sure enough, there’s a box of Kleenex, and she pulls out a considerable number of tissues.

But she doesn’t cover her hands with it. Instead, she turns to him and and presses it softly against the corner of his lips, where most of the  _ empousa _ ’s remains had clumped up.

His hands tighten on the wheel, and he vaguely registers the speedometer ticking upwards. 

_ It’s normal after fights _ , he tells himself.  _ Adrenaline and hormones are high. _

The feathery sensation of the tissue against his skin drifts down to the underside of his jawline.

He takes ahold of the tissue and pulls it from her bleeding fingers. 

“You should clean yourself up,” he tells her, jutting his chin over to the box of tissue. 

She does pull some more out, only to give them to Connor again. 

“Wipe your jeans,” she tells him. 

That reminds him of something. With one hand on the wheel, he lifts his butt off the seat to pull out Diane’s jacket, now wrinkled all over. He silently mourns the waste of what looks like good quality leather and hands it over to her. 

“Your sacrifice will be remembered,” he tries to joke. 

She takes the jacket, and he takes the tissues. They spend the rest of the car ride to Camp silent—Connor absentmindedly wiping his jeans and keeping his eyes on the road, Diane trying to staunch the flow of blood from her fingers. 

Privately, he thinks the way that his heart rate isn’t going down is unhealthy. He can’t even tell why it keeps up its rabbity pace. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i... didnt like this chapter HAHAHAHAH it was a boring chapter so i sorta threw in a fight scene just to spice things up a little
> 
> nevertheless, this was still necessary =_= the dream scene especially,,, oh man i have no idea how to write kids 
> 
> another hc about connor: he's an adrenaline junkie, and the ptsd from the two wars don't help at all


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor's past seems to have a way of catching up with him. Camp Half-Blood? He's now back in Cabin Eleven. Metaphysical philosophy? Apparently Chiron is a fan of St. Thomas Aquinas. Diane? ... Diane?

“Oh, you’re still here,” Connor tells the caduceus hanging over Cabin Eleven’s doorway. “Thought you’d be eaten by termites by now.”

The caduceus, of course, doesn’t answer. Still, Connor’s echoic memory is good enough to recall George and Martha’s voices, how they grated on the insides of his eardrums in some sort of odd snake language. 

He scuffs his sneakers on the worn doorstep then enters the cabin. 

There’s no big welcome, no delighted reactions. Everyone’s still sleeping. Connor checks his wristwatch for the time.  _ 6:14 AM.  _

“CECIL MARKOWITZ, APHRODITE’S TAKEN ALL THE HOT WATER!” he roars, and half of the cabin deadass  _ shoots  _ up into perfect ninety-degree figures. “GET UP, GET UP, Y’ALL ARE LATE FOR ARTS AND CRAFTS! MR. D’S GONNA SHATTER YOUR POTTERY PIECES AND MAKE YOU EAT THE SHARDS!”

General chaos ensues. Entire mattresses and blankets come crash onto the ground, and footsteps thunder across the wooden planks of the cabin. Given how loose the planks are, the cabin begins rattling like a horde of rhinoceros is stampeding across the floor. Shouts fly across the room (“ _ Fuck, where’s my deodorant?!” “Hey, give back my wallet!” “Stop chewing on my—HEY THAT’S MY SWEATER!” “Ow, you just stepped on my bal—” “Wake the fuck up!” _ ), and Connor leans against the doorway, watching all of it unfold. 

Before long, a girl with a remarkably bright red bandana steps onto the end of the wrong plank—her foot sinks in, and before she can react, her nose makes a painful crunch against the ground. But the boy on the other end gets the brunt of it—the end of the plank that goes up slams into his crotch, and his eyes go wide, his mouth gapes in an open scream, and his knees squeeze together, trying to minimize the pain as he sinks to his knees. 

“Oh my gods!” someone screams, and they all congregate around the two unfortunate souls. Someone offers the girl a tissue, and it comes away with a splotch of color vivid enough to rival her bandana, but the boy is beyond saving. From what Connor can hear, many of the consolations are offered to his hopes of starting a family. 

The Asian girl holding the bloody tissue rises from her knees, probably to get more tissues, only to stop in her tracks. 

“Guys!” she manages. “I think we just found Cecil’s porn stash!”

“His porn stash is gonna give him children in the future,” the boy victim groans. “I want your firstborn as compensation, Markowitz!”

“Now, now,” someone else soothes. “A firstborn might be… excessive compared to a few minutes of pain…”

“ _ Few minutes?!  _ I’ll beat your balls with a plank and let’s see how that works out!”

“What the fuck,” comes a groggy voice, “is happening?”

Directly in Connor’s line of vision, lo and behold, rising from his bed like a zombie, is Cabin Eleven’s current counselor: Cecil Markowitz. 

Cecil, if Connor’s going to be frank, looks like he hasn’t aged. At all. At eighteen years old, he still sports the baby cheeks that Connor remembers from four years ago. His eyes still do that thing where they get swollen enough upon waking that Cecil can’t see past his eyelids, and his freckles are as wild as ever, racing all the way across the bridge of his nose and up the broad plain of his forehead. 

“We found your porn stash, O Esteemed Counsellor.” A round of sniggers commences. 

That wakes Cecil up. From his top bunk, he launches himself down to the floor and lands with perfect grace like a cat. Quick as lightning, he resets the plank and props up his chin on his fist to face his cabinmates. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, we did!” the girl with the bleeding nose snarls. “I will  _ not  _ let my suffering be erased by the oppressive powers of this hierarchy—”

But Cecil isn’t listening to any of them. His eyes, now slightly more awake and less swollen, drag across the floor, along the length of Connor’s shadow, and moves up to stare at his face. 

The rest of the cabin follows. 

“Glad to know I still hold power here,” Connor says, deadpan, but he can’t stop the corners of his mouth dimpling in the way that they do only when he’s genuinely amused. 

“Connor fucking Stoll,” Cecil gasps. 

Instead of springing up and greeting him with an embrace, or even punching him in the face, Cecil lets out a dramatic hum and sweeps his arms in a circle to grandly prostrate himself before Connor’s feet. 

Connor’s eyebrows raise. He wants to see this. 

“The legendary prank master has returned at long last,” begins Cecil, his voice deep and solemn. “Connor Stoll, son of Hermes, war hero in the Second Titanomachy and Gigantomachy, intelligence expert, stupidity expert, prank expert, war missions expert—”

“Fuck you, Markowitz,” Connor laughs, but Cecil isn’t done. 

“—respected Doodler and Sculptor of Penises, whose works could rival that of Pygmalion’s, one-half of the shared Stoll braincell, and—” Here, Cecil pauses dramatically and whirls his arms in a circle again. Connor steels himself. “—shining beacon of hope for useless bisexuals everywhere.”

Unable to tamp down his snickers any longer, Connor tries to aim a kick at Cecil, but his half-brother only catches his ankle and pulls him forward. The world goes all wonky, but Connor’s laughs keep coming even as the hard floor knocks the wind out of him. 

“OPERATION: DOGPILE!” Cecil yells, and someone jumps and throws their whole body weight on top of Connor. All the oxygen leaves his body, but another person lands on him, and another, and another and another and anotherandanotherandanotherandanother—

“JESUS FUCK!” is all he can scream before his sight gets covered by the silhouette of someone’s ass. He shouts and wriggles, hoping all the while that the person doesn’t decide to pass gas right then and there. 

“THIS. IS. HERMEESSSSS!” Everyone lets out a war cry, and Connor really thinks this is how he’s gonna die: suffocation by his own half-siblings. He feels like he’s stepped into some  _ Lord of the Flies  _ shit. 

“Alright, alright, that’s enough!” 

Thankfully, one by one, they get off him, and Connor’s lung capacity begins to expand again. By the time Cecil offers him a hand up, he’s gasping in the sweet oxygen and trying to squeeze out the black dots dancing in his vision. His hand is met with an electric current that zips through the rest of his arm, but he’s too woozy to register the numb feeling in his shoulder socket. 

“How’s that for payback, Stoll?” Cecil places his hands on his hips, and behind him, his cabinmates cheer. 

Connor looks him dead in the eye. “Uncreative.”

Still smiling, Cecil slaps him on the shoulder. Another electric current shocks and paralyzes Connor’s left arm. 

“You never visit us anymore, you meanie,” Alice Miyazawa complains. Her sleek black hair is up in pigtails, which is the only way he’s able to tell her apart from Julia, her twin. Gods, he hasn’t seen them in so long. 

“Sorry.” If he could, Connor would shrug his shoulders. But he can’t, so he settles for a sheepish cock of his head. “Seeing Mr. D every week just conditioned me to be traumatized by Camp, y’know?”

“Liar,” Julia mumbles. “Travis visits us every month or so.”

“Well, Travis has more free time than me. Also, Katie’s a pretty good incentive.”

It’s only after the words have left his mouth that Connor realizes that it may not have been the right thing to say. One huddle in particular, the one near the far end of the room, quickly avert their gazes and adopt sheepish smiles. 

He scans them, maintaining his own. The Kronos defectors. 

“Like, you know how my mom is anyway. She got so fed up with me going on quests and fighting monsters. She threatened me with disembowelment if I wasted the tuition she worked hard for, hahaha…” Connor swallows. His sentence raises a few “same’s” and sighs of commiseration, but he can see the way Cecil huffs and crosses his arms. 

“The twins are always looking for someone to get inspiration from, you know,” he sulks. “My stories aren’t enough for them, apparently.”

“Don’t worry, Markowitz, you’re a great storyteller,” a kind soul assures him, and murmurs of assent go around. Connor nudges him and gives him a small smile. 

“You seem like you’re doing a great job of being a counselor, kid. I left my cabin in good hands.” Now  _ that’s  _ the right thing to say, because Cecil’s face brightens up and his cheeks puff up in a close-eyed smile. 

“That means a lot, Con-man.” He jumps up a little to return Connor’s shoulder bump. 

Alice and Julia take the chance to descend upon him like a pair of old-school cartoon devils. He can imagine the spiked tails wiggling behind them. “Teach us your ways, master!” they chant, shaking him back and forth. 

Questions erupt all around the cabin. There’s one about his alleged cross-state international chocolate smuggling ring in Camp Jupiter (all false, it stayed within Camp Half-Blood because he and Travis didn’t have time in between the Titan and Giant Wars to establish contacts in Camp Jupiter), another about the truth behind his brother’s legendary chocolate Easter bunnies prank on the Demeter cabin (all true—he made sure that when the rumors circulated, only facts about the tragic beginning of his brother’s love life would last), and another about tips on how to pull off another Golden Mango. 

He scoffs at that. “Golden Mango?!” he asks in disbelief. “Be more original. And besides, it’s one of the more boring pranks in my opinion. Travis and I just took inspiration from the Judgement of Paris.”

“What’s the best prank possible, then?!”

He smirks. “A prank that everyone knows you’re responsible for but there’s no proof that they can use against you.”

“Sample?” someone pipes up.

Privately, he thinks to himself,  _ Phoebe the Hunter.  _ Chiron nor Mr. D had ever been able to figure out who painted the Camp shirt with centaur blood. He and Travis had given her the shirt, sure, and Phoebe had humiliated Connor in front of a lot of campers,  _ sure,  _ but how to prove that they’d procured centaur blood of all things?  _ And besides,  _ Connor pleaded with Chiron,  _ Travis and I don’t hold grudges, Chiron! That’s the purpose of our pranks—to blow off some steam so we don’t end up like—like— _

Poor Travis had no choice but to nod desperately along. Chiron caught onto what Connor was blubbering about and immediately let them go. 

Aphrodite still owes him a favor. Travis had cashed his share in long ago, and he was going to get Katie holding vigil at his bedside for it when he wakes up. 

Outwardly, he grins at the brave kid. He’s got short but stocky, arms already bulging from muscles Connor recognizes from relentless archery practice. “Well, it would ruin the whole premise of no one ever finding out, wouldn’t it?”

“We’re family, though!” someone whines.

Right as the rest of the cabin is about to let out another war cry, a knock vibrates through the door, which he’s leaning on. He reaches around and twists the knob. 

Diane has in her hands his clothes, now clean and pressed and folded in a neat pile. She wordlessly pushes it towards him, and he raises his eyebrows in surprise. He gives her a once-over: her nose has been set right, the bruise he gave her last night is quickly fading from the pallid surface of her skin, and her leather jacket, now sitting on her shoulders again, was apparently recovered. 

“The nymphs?” he guesses, and she nods. “Huh. They’re usually not this fast. Back when I was here, I’d have to flirt with them for at least an hour the day before I ordered a rush laundry job.”

He watches the way her eyes awkwardly skip to the frame of the doorway, and he lets loose a reckless grin. “Diane, oh Diane, I didn’t know you could flirt! I didn’t know you were even willing to hold conversation!”

“It was necessary,” she says curtly. “Get dressed.”

“I would like a demonstration,” he says, just to further grate on her nerves. She huffs and pushes the door against his weight to slam it shut. 

Scoffing in amusement, he turns back.

And meets the squinting gazes of his half-siblings. 

“Good morning to you guys, too,” he says. “Well, it was really fun fucking around with you guys, but I was just here to drop by and get some things. So…”

“‘I would like a demonstration,’” simper Julia, Alice, and Cecil simultaneously. They freeze and stare at each other. 

Connor blinks at them. “That was a terrible impression.”

The sound of skin smacking skin fills the cabin. About four-fifths of them had slapped their foreheads in chorus, and a good portion of them are grumbling—something about how Hermes clearly didn’t give his kids enough IQ points to get through life. 

Connor is, safe to say, bewildered. “Uh.” He points his thumb over his shoulder. “Imma. Go.”   
  


Cecil looks at him pleadingly. “Come back soon. Please. We miss you.”

_ Some of you have never even met me…  _

“Bring Travis back as well!”

“I want a hug!”

“Oh, can we take a picture?”

Connor sighs, but he really can’t deny the fond warmth ballooning in his chest. He leans in and smiles through the bright flash of the film camera, and he lets himself feel like a beloved celebrity for all of five minutes. Before reality sets in. 

* * *

One of the Stolls’ favorite hobbies back in Camp was attempting endless break-ins into the Camp Store. Back when Miranda Gardiner ran the boring stuff like bookkeeping and everyone thought that Katie and Miranda were full-blooded siblings, Travis had the brilliant idea of getting Katie’s attention by instigating a whole hostage—with Miranda. Somehow, Connor let Travis rope him into planning a whole scenario in which Miranda would step into a booby trap and be immobilized, thereby prompting Katie to perform a search-and-rescue operation. 

And like the fool he was back then, Connor let himself get recruited for the insane, overly complicated prank just so that Travis could satisfy his unbearable compulsion to triumphantly say, “You see, this is a demonstration of how you’ve captured my heart. But oops, I got the wrong Gardiner! Hey, Katie, mind switching with her?” Travis had apparently thought of the lines at three in the morning while taking a piss in the bushes outside, and from there, the terrible storyline played out.

In the end, the joke pretty much backfired on him; as it turned out, the spelling of Katie’s last name, Gardner, was different from the spelling of Miranda’s last name,  _ Gardiner _ . Gardner but with an “i.” Connor’s initial triumph at seeing his rigged floorboards cage Miranda in thick ropes quickly turned into mortification that his brother couldn’t even get his crush’s last name right, dyslexic or not. 

That incident, not the chocolate Easter bunnies (contrary to urban legend), was actually the trigger for Katie and Travis’ rivalry. The other prank in question was what jumpstarted the  _ inter-cabin rivalry _ , which had been bound to happen anyway if the tangible sexual tension between his brother and Katie had been anything to go by. 

But now, here he is, inspecting the stocks in a calm, respectable manner like a calm, respectable graduate of Camp Half-Blood. The fact that there’s no guard or supervisor for him to mess with definitely helps; apparently, Lou Ellen had somehow charmed the accounts book into being able to decide whether or not the reason indicated for withdrawing supplies or cash was valid enough for the demigod to take out a loan. If the excuse was deemed valid, the customer could walk out of the store unharmed. If not… Well, he wouldn’t be a calm, respectable alumnus of Camp Half-Blood if other people witnessed him hanging by his undies out of the store window. 

He looks down at his basket, which is filled with at least ten bottles of Hephaestus’ Insta-Polish for Celestial Weapons and a handful of Aphroseidon’s (Connor considers purchasing bleach after reading that) All-in-one Wash Pods, guaranteed to keep oily hair and body odor to a minimum for at least a week. He also grabs some Listerine and a tube of Medea’s Sunscreen; he’s lived a decent, civilized life for far too long in his college dorms, and he’s definitely not ready for the sensation of dead skin cells and dirt and whatever caking on his skin for days—or weeks—on end. Not like how he did before. 

Connor walks out from between the shelves to the main corridor. Where the cashier would’ve been in a normal convenience store, there is instead a plain-looking journal and a fancy sign pen. On the page it’s on, ink is already spreading to write in Greek his purchases. 

Swallowing, he approaches the journal and picks up the pen. The Greek comes easily to him—it always has, more so than it did to others, seeing as his dad was the god of languages. 

_ Loan: Connor Stoll, Son of Hermes, age 22; 20 Golden Drachmas and 300 USD; for— _

He pauses.

Well, he’s not in any position to explicitly state his and Diane’s quest, seeing as the Olympians are being very defensive—

“You could always try writing ‘extenuating circumstances,’” someone suggests behind him. 

Connor is unable to stop himself from jumping. But when he turns around, it’s just Chiron, and not even Chiron in his horse form. His former teacher wheels serenely towards him, and Connor has to close his eyes to prevent himself from rolling them.

“I used that at least five times in the methodology of my thesis, thank you very much,” he says pointedly. “I didn’t think the divine would accept ‘extenuating circumstances’ as an explanation.”

“Looking at it, are they not the ‘extenuating circumstances’?” Chiron muses. His eyes are plain brown even as the light hits them, but something in them reminds Connor that he’s talking to an immortal creature that’s got a few thousand years on him. 

Suddenly, he feels like he’s fourteen again and being reprimanded for the fourth prank that week. He turns around and inks “ _ extenuating circumstances _ ” into the book. 

The drawer beneath the table glows green and juts out to reveal a pouch and three crisp hundred-dollar bills. Connor snatches them up, and the drawer slams shut. 

“I don’t know how much Diane told you—”

“She has told me nothing. She refuses to, in fact, which is quite a problem for me.”

Connor slowly nods. “Because I, a legendary troublemaker, will absolutely tell you everything.”

Chiron sighs. “I only mean well, Connor. And I hope you do not take offense when I say that beyond a shadow of a doubt, Diane is a much harder nut to crack.”

“Well, here’s the thing.” Connor crouches down and unzips his backpack to stuff all his purchases inside. “Telling you will just make it worse.”

“I hope you understand why I cannot allow just anyone, even graduates, to come into Camp Half-Blood claiming that they need to go on a quest without a reasonable explanation.”

“And I hope you believe when I say I ain’t telling you anything.”

Chiron is silent for a few moments. Then— “Is that Backstreet Bo—”

“No.”

“Ah. Apologies for my assumption.” Behind that bushy beard, Connor  _ knows  _ he’s trying to hide a smile. He wants to break the desk in half. With his empty head. “If it’s any incentive, she is currently being… ah, thoroughly questioned by Mr. D in the other room.”

“Could you be a bit more biased?” Connor asks exasperatedly. “You watched us grow up. You taught us. The least you could do is put some trust in us.”

“Connor, I want to help.” Chiron wheels a little closer towards him. “I cannot do that if I don’t know anything.”

He crosses his arms. “You left someone alone in a room with a god who can drive people to madness if he’s had a shit enough day. Let her out first.”

Chiron mulls over it. After a few seconds, he dips his head in agreement. 

“Ever the businessman, Connor Stoll,” he quips. He wheels past Connor out the store door. 

Though his feet are on the ground, Connor feels like his head might as well ascend to the Empire State’s 600th floor with how fast his thoughts were spinning. If Diane lied about their quest, would Mr. D find out? Or would he fall for whatever she said? If he did end up finding about the truth, would that spell the end for them? Connor wasn’t ready to be vaporized by Zeus' Master Bolt. 

Or, they could be completely wrong in their assumptions. Maybe it wasn’t the Olympians who were responsible for the disappearances of the former defectors. Maybe there was another reason as to why Alabaster was being hunted down—

Just as Chiron reaches for the knob, the door to the Big House office swings open. Diane walks out, as placid as a lake on a sunny day. 

Connor skips over the side of Chiron’s wheelchair and grabs her elbow. “What’d you say?” he hisses.

“Only the truth,” she says blandly. 

“The truth?!”

“It’s not worth hiding the fact that Alabaster needs our help, Connor. I realized while I was speaking with Lord Dionysus, it’s not as if the Olympians hold a grudge so deep against him that they would have him dead. And at the hands of his sister, no less.” She looks over her shoulder. “Hecate does not take lightly slights against her offspring, especially since the Wars. Correct me if I am wrong, my lord.”

Behind her, a fuming Mr. D glares at his champagne flute. Under his grasp, fine spidery webs begin to form in the glass. Above them, Connor can hear the wood of the Big House creaking. 

He looks up. The planks, dead pieces of wood which never should have been able to grow again, have new branches mutating from their flat bodies. He thinks that there are leaves budding out of the tiniest stems. 

He whirls to Diane, mouth grim in alarm. But she gives no indication that she hears or sees the planks growing back into trees, only spinning on her heel to face Mr. D. 

“Lord Dionysus?” she cautions, and if Connor didn’t know any better, he would’ve said that there was a hint of superiority in her voice. 

“... Go help that traitor for all I care,” he gripes. His watery blue eyes shift into redviolet wine when he meets Diane’s gaze. “Daughter of Thanatos—”

“Lord Dionysus.” Her torso dips in a perfect bow. “Let us part on good terms.”

The champagne flute shatters, and Diane takes that as her cue to close the door behind her. 

“I apologize for not divulging anything earlier, sir.” She gives another bow, much shallower this time, to Chiron. “I feared that the gods would in fact hinder us from helping Alabaster.”

Chiron’s brow furrowed. “You wish to save Alabaster from Lamia?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Funny. Percy and Annabeth sent an IM yesterday, saying that you had killed Lamia and that they were en route to Olympus.”

“Olympus?” Connor cuts in. Even Diane looks slightly panicked. 

“Yes, why—”

“Well, either way, this entire incident with Lamia just proved to us that Alabaster’s banishment should be lifted,” Connor bullshits. “While Olympus’ two-time darling and architect do their thing, we just wanna convince him to come out of hiding himself.”

“Lord Dionysus will verify our words, Lord Chiron.”

At that, Chiron has no choice but to concede. “Well, first, you could drop the ‘Lord.’ I’ve taught enough students in my lifetime to be used to more casual forms of address.” He chuckles. “Second, if you wish to make contact with Mr. Torrington, take advantage of your shared heritage, the three of you.”

“Heritage? But we all have different godly parents.”

“Yes, but your godly parents have one thing in common.”

_ He’s waiting for us to figure out the answer _ , he realizes. A flash of irritation strikes him.  _ Like we’re still his students.  _

A glance at Diane doesn’t help, either. Her blank gaze tells him she’s just as stumped as he is.

“Chiron, Chiron,” he laughs, sighing, “I’m too dumb for this. Please just tell us.” 

“I think your nine-year stay here in Camp was too long for us to pretend that you are not intellectually gifted, Connor.”

That… was true. Connor huffs. Chiron’s seen all of him and Travis—from their adjustment periods, to their forced maturity and adaptation to war, until the very end of their trauma conga lines. There wasn’t any fooling this old pony. 

But for all his studies in demigod lore, he’s unable to think of anything that Hermes, Hecate, and Thanatos would have in common. His dad was a jack of all trades. Hecate was like a mysterious OP boss in a video game. Thanatos was basically Grim Reaper.

He turns to Diane. “What does your dad do other than collect people’s souls?”

She blinks. “He… guides them to the Underworld.”

A light bulb goes off in his head. He whirls to Chiron.

“They’re the only three gods free to roam all three realms of the universe. Sky, sea, and Underworld. Because they deal with souls, or in Hecate’s case, crossroads. And they’re all psychopomps.”

Chiron steeples his hands. “Very good, Connor. You’re hardly as slow as you pretend or claim to be. However, there are more than three realms.”

“Wait, what?” Connor counts and recounts them in his head. “Is there a separate realm for the earth itself? Like, without the magic and souls part?”

“No, although that is a good guess. The three realms exist in the physical plane. Do you recall my lectures about the difference between a god and God with a capital ‘G’?”

“God with a capital ‘G’ is metaphysical,” Connor parrots. 

“So if there is a physical plane, there is…?”

“A metaphysical plane. Transcending physical matter.”

“My father spoke of this,” Diane says abruptly. There’s some sort of excitement in her eyes. “Mortals would call it physics, but we know it is comprised of the supernatural. Death and by consequence, souls, exist because of the metaphysical.”

“Children of the Underworld in particular excel in making use of this plane. Offspring of other gods see their powers manifested in the physical world, like Percy and his hydrokinesis.”

“But psychopomps deal with souls, so we can contact him on the metaphysical plane. Is that what you’re saying?”

“He’s not dead,” Diane mumbles, eyes hardening.

“No, but like anyone, he sleeps,” Connor blurts out. “What’s that saying—’Sleeping is like practice for dying’?” He crosses his arms. “Wow.”

“What if he does not want to be contacted?”

Chiron gives Diane a smile. “I’m sure that between your abilities and Connor’s mind, you two will find a way.”

Diane exhales. “Thank you for your help, Lord Chiron.”

Chiron strokes his bushy beard. “A pleasure, Diane. It’s my duty to help every demigod I can.”

She looks down at the ground. “Even Alabaster?”

“Especially Alabaster.”

She bows her head and walks off.

Connor’s still reeling from that conversation when she does, so for a few seconds, all he can do is watch her retreating figure. “Ugh, I think you just gave me college flashbacks. I thought I left metaphysical philosophy behind when I graduated.”

“You’d be surprised, Connor, at how accurately even the saints among the philosophers explained our world.”

“Ack, please no more. I never want to be involved in any discussions about Aquinas ever again.”

“Connor.”

He stops in his hurried steps and grinds his molars against the rising annoyance. “Yes, Chiron?”

“It’s good to see that you’ve moved past your trauma.”

His fingers curl into his palms, the nails digging into the meat of his flesh. 

“I thought,” he says, voice tight, “maybe this would help me move on.”

“I see that. I’m glad you’ve managed to resolve all issues with Diane, and I only wish you two the best from here on out.”

To anyone else, it might have sounded like a perfunctory farewell, but something about it strikes Connor as odd. 

“... I haven’t forgiven her yet for harming Trav, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was under the impression that you left Camp for reasons relating to her.”

He blinks. “Your… impression would be wrong, then.” The end of his sentence, though, tilts up in uncertainty. He wasn’t aware that others had perceived the two of them to be so close… “I did my job, as far as I’m concerned. I supervised her like I was ordered to, then—”

He pauses.  _ Then what? What happened after you were done? _

His hand flies to his head, right between his eyes where it feels like someone had started prying it open and stuffing it with cotton. 

_ … Then what? What happened after…? _

Chiron lays a gentle hand on the crook of his elbow, and on instinct, Connor leans in at the contact: sunflower turning to face the sun and all that. “Well, whatever your reasons are, I’m glad you’ve acknowledged them. You’ve seen past the haze of grief, and that’s paramount, Connor.”

Connor almost feels insulted, but he knows for a fact that he  _ would  _ put his emotions before logic if he was angry enough. “Thanks, Chiron. Er, nice talking.” 

_ “I’m sorry,  _ Jie!  _ Mr. Connor pulled it out of me!” _

“I—I’m gonna go run after her now.”

And like a coward, Connor turns heel and escapes his former teacher. He can literally feel the sad puppy (pony?) gaze Chiron is giving his fleeing silhouette, but the years, if nothing else, have calloused Connor to its effects. Still, Chiron’s been practicing that gaze on students for millennia, and Connor, despite his belief that he is a hardass through and through, can’t stop the heavy weight of guilt sinking to anchor itself in his gut. 

Well, he and Diane have got someone to contact. 

He finds the woman in question at the very end of the right tail of the omega shape that the cabins form. 

“The hell are you doing?” he groans at the sight of her. She’s on her knees in front of Cabin Twenty-One, her cabin, knuckles deep in the soil of the flowerbed of the porch. 

“I’ve been stupid,” she says, so softly that he nearly misses it. 

Thankful that he didn’t, he immediately jabs back, “I thought we’d already established that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be on this trip.”

Ignoring him, she continues monologuing under her breath: “I’ve been using pure muscle to get to him. Capturing monsters, holding them, torturing and threatening them for answers.”

He drops to a crouch beside her in his shock, which really does not help his burgeoning headache a single bit. “You’ve been  _ what?! _ You know what, never mind—” He slaps her hand away from the flowerbed. “What are you doing, we’ve got to find a way and a place to fucking dreamwalk!”

“This is the way!” she grits out, reaching back to hit his hand. Her obsidian eyes look more like flint now, but the type that’s been scraped another metal so that the bare beginnings of embers are just breathing. Her hands steady then return to digging at the flowerbed. “For the rest of the quest, anyway. We can make use of Hypnos Cabin while we’re still here, induce ourselves into sleeping.”

Connor then takes the time to look at the flowers that populate the small patch of soil. They’re bright red, fucking offensive to his eyes in fact, brighter red than blood that you would see spurting out from an artery. Their centers are perfect little black circles, and the petals are round as well, simply overlapping each other to shape the overall figure of the flower into an even bigger circle. 

“Poppies? They can induce sleep? I thought that only existed in like, Game of Thrones or some shit?”

“Poppies are my father’s symbol.” She looks at him; the embers seem to spark a little. “I know how to brew them with different dosages. They could relieve pain, induce sleep, or kill a person.”

She scoops up two handfuls of poppy flowers and says, “Please hold them.”

Well, he has no choice, does he? Otherwise she’d kill him in his sleep or something—that explanation of the poppy’s properties sure seemed like a threat. He lets her dump them into his palms. 

“I have a question.”

“You may ask.”

“How’d you persuade Mr. D into believing that shitty lie of yours?”

Diane produces a ziplock from her left boot and holds it out to him. He takes that as his cue to pour them into the bag, about ten individual flowers. 

“What makes you think he didn’t believe me?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that angry.”

“I have my ways. He won’t change his mind, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

They manage to squeeze in one and a half more batches before the poppies are squished against the bag, and Diane tucks it into a small pouch she has at her waist. 

“Let’s go to the Hypnos Cabin.” A beat. “You need some sleep for that headache of yours.”

“How’d you know I have a headache?” he grumbles. 

“You’re blinking twice as much. And you’re wincing in the sunlight.”

He scoffs under his breath. 

They walk across the silent grass fields. The sun is high above their heads, and people are gonna be awake soon. 

Except for the Hypnos Cabin, of course. Connor doesn’t even bother knocking before he steps over the threshold—and nearly collapses onto the floor face-first. 

Keyword: nearly. He just barely recognizes the smell of freshly oiled leather on Diane’s jacket before he turns his face into her clavicle; dark spots have crowded into his eyesight, and he can’t see anything more. 

His feet drag across the floor:  _ thudthudthud.  _ But in an impressive feat, with an arm tight around his waist, Diane crouches down and sweeps up his knees with her other arm. 

_ Fuck.  _ His head spins, and it’s not just from his near brush with oblivion. He buries her face further into her jacket, centering himself on that smell of freshly oiled leather. 

They’re moving across the room, slowly but surely. His ears buzz. He can’t hear Diane’s footsteps. 

He just wants to sleep. Oh, dear gods, he wants to sleep. The Hypnos Cabin is everything you’d want in a bedroom. The moderate chill in the cabin soothes him, and at the far end of the room, the rhythmic splatter of Lethe water against a black cauldron burrows into his senses. 

His lower back is laid against something soft. The marshmallow-like sensation just about swallows his entire frame, and everything his skin comes into contact with dissolves into a fuzzy kind of feeling. Even his tongue weighs heavy in his mouth. 

It’s comforting. It’s frightening. His headache has long gone, but so have his sight, hearing, and touch. Against the waves of oblivion, Connor pulls in his chest and breathes in as deeply as he can, holding the cold tang of something like lavender in his windpipe.

Wrong move. It only makes his breaths slow and deepen, and the overwhelming blanket of sleep envelopes him. 

Something warmer settles into his side, and a voice reverberates in his head as if he’s underwater: “Sleep, Connor. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

It’s frightening. It’s comforting. That’s the last bit of consciousness he has, and it slips through his head, all gossamer-like, sending him tumbling into darkness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was originally much much longer until i realized that 1k words of explaining metaphysics and another 2k words of info dump about connor's life at camp wasn't exactly ideal WHAHAHAHHAHAHA. if there's one thing i let myself have though, it was connor getting bridal carried oops :D sowwy i couldn't resist—the entire set-up of the hypnos cabin being able to wreak sleepiness onto someone just called for it!
> 
> and yes, diane's buff enough to carry a fully grown man who has a good five inches on her. 
> 
> also i love hermes cabin shenanigans in case you couldnt tell
> 
> im excited for the next chapter!! we'll be finally meeting an often-mentioned but offscreen character wahu! is it alabaster? hm, maybe so :>


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate's most powerful child of the age wakes up faced with three problems, namely his hormones, his smartass guardian, and his undying yearning for a certain someone. He decides to solve it by sleeping. Again.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Alabaster Torrington wakes up to a problem between his legs. He stares at it blearily for a few seconds before rolling onto his back and slamming a pillow over his face. 

A few minutes later, he finds himself shifting onto his left side. Then his back again, in an attempt to shake off the low simmer in his gut. But the fire only rises, like a lover teasingly walking their fingers up his stomach and up his chest. 

He grits his teeth and throws himself onto his left side. The rough sheets bunch up around his hips. He raises his legs to kick them away, but in doing so, the friction against his thighs only caress him, and he’s unable to stop the keening gasp that leaves his throat. 

His head snaps over to face the other side of the room, where Dr. Claymore’s back is lit by the reading lamp on his desk. Fortunately, he’s too engrossed in his current tome, too accustomed to Alabaster’s recurring and noisy nightmares to give us tossing and groaning any special attention. 

Alabaster eyes the bathroom as he draws his lower lip between his teeth. No, no the bathroom was closer to Dr. Claymore’s desk than his bed was. But surely, it would be better to have a door between them…? Or would it be better to take care of himself in the living room? Dr. Claymore would question him about it after, then…

His skin is on fire now that his body has been exposed to the crisp air. It  _ really  _ refuses to go down. He bit down on his lip harder, hard enough to draw blood, just for something other than… this to cloud his senses. 

The erupting pain only blazes downward. Bad idea. The bedsheets are starting to wrinkle in his grip. A

Alabaster allows himself a silent gasp as the fire persists. His abdominals clench, and he abruptly bolts up on his hands rather than make another infernal sound. 

He breathes.  _ One, two, three—  _ His vision warps into black spots, and his head goes fuzzy like it does every time he stands up too fast, and his arms lose their strength. 

“Alabaster!”

The floor comes up to meet him. His right knee groans in protest when it thuds against the ground, but otherwise, his head clears in a matter of seconds. Hunched over in an attempt to cover his problem, Alabaster stares up at Dr. Claymore with the most dazed look he could conjure. 

“I’m alright,” he huffs. Dr. Claymore is out of his chair and moving to crouch down over him. Alabaster groans in annoyance and swats at the dark-skinned man. “I said,  _ I’m alright. _ ”

“Your friend down south clearly isn’t,” Dr. Claymore snorts. “Really, Alabaster, it happens all the time to boys your age. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Alabaster is silent for a few seconds, mouth trembling around words that can’t seem to make their way from his brain to his tongue. Face flaming red, he yells, “WELL, DON’T CALL MY PENIS THAT.”

Dr. Claymore rolls his eyes and stands up. “Well, I will give you and  _ your penis _ some privacy in the meantime, then. I’ll be in the living room, you brat. Gods, why did I sign up for this again?” he mutters to himself on the way out. 

Alabaster sneers at his retreating back and grabs a pillow to stuff his burning face into. Gods, he wasn’t sure what was worse, Dr. Claymore having a front-row seat to his problem, or Dr. Claymore acting so nonchalantly about it. 

“Fucking babysitter!” he groans. “I’m a twenty-two-year-old man! Who the Hades is he calling a brat?! Ugh...”

He peeks down from the pillow then quickly stuffs his face into it again. It… It isn’t going away… Despite the absolute abject utter horrifying humiliation he just faced… 

Theoretically, if Alabaster really wanted to sink into the ground and die, he could do it with his magic and live. But his mother would eviscerate him if Dr. Claymore didn’t kill him with endless lectures first; and besides, he still had so much to do before facing his inevitable fate in the Fields of Punishment. He sighs and snakes a hand down his boxers. 

And like butter, everything else melts away, replaced by the roar of base need within him. 

* * *

“You’re free to come into the room now, you know,” Alabaster grumbles. His forehead is squished between the doorframe and the door. “It really doesn’t take that long.”

“ _ What  _ doesn’t take that long?” Dr. Claymore asks with a grin, because he’s a little shit who can. Alabaster snarls and slams the door shut. “Human sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, Alabaster! You can say the word, or shall I have you repeat after me?”

Dr. Claymore is gonna drag this on. Alabaster rips the door open and marches into the living room. “The reason why I asked you to come in is because I need to talk to you! Why do you think I’d want you to spend the rest of the night in a room where I just… I don’t know, spunked!”

“It’s currently three in the morning, Alabaster. And you could’ve just come out here if you really had the need to discuss something with me.”

Alabaster has no comeback for that. “You’re lucky my mother favors you, Doctor.” But he plops down on the couch beside him, and the good doctor puts away the book he’s reading. 

He glances down at the title. It takes him a few tries, but eventually, he manages to decipher the words “dreams” and “Freud” through his dyslexia. 

“Is that  _ The Interpretation of Dreams _ ?”

“Yes.”

“How fitting,” Alabaster mumbles under his breath. “I had a strange dream.”

“The cause of your problem?”

“Yes. No! I don’t know.” Alabaster buries his head into his palms. “We’ve lived together for six years and counting. You can’t possibly think that this is the first time I’ve woken up with morning wood. But me, being the insomniac I am, I value my sleep way more over feeling good for a few seconds, if you get what I’m saying.”

“I no longer have a mortal body, but go on.”

“So normally, I sleep it off, and when I wake up in the afternoon, it’s gone. But this one… This one refused to go away.”

“Because of the dream?” Dr. Claymore inquires. 

“I don’t know.” Alabaster presses his lips together. “I saw her.”

“Her? Your mother? Have you come to me about an Oedipus complex—”

“NO!  _ Her. _ ”

“I’m afraid I don’t know whom you’re referring to.”

Alabaster swallows past the lump in his throat. Dr. Claymore eyes him. 

“Ah. I see. Perhaps that would explain your problem, then?”

“It wasn’t  _ that  _ kind of dream. It was… one of those demigod dreams. I relived our first meeting, except it didn’t go the way it happened. It was like someone had just put her face and me in the time and place where we first met, but other than that, nothing was the same.”

“So she spoke to you through the dream? Diverging from the actual memories, the actual script, to deliver to you a current message.”

“No, it couldn’t have been her.”

“You only said that you  _ suspected  _ her death—”

“No. The person talking wasn’t her.”

Dr. Claymore frowns. “I’m sorry?”

“It was like someone had possessed her body and used her as a mouthpiece. And…” Alabaster grips his shaking hands. “That’s what got me all worked up. What she was saying, how she was moving and talking…”

“But you don’t know who the other person is,” Dr. Claymore clarifies. Alabaster nods rapidly. 

“I should’ve been disgusted or angry or something, but all I could feel was… deja vu.”

“Did anything she say stand out to you?”

“She said something like, ‘This is a game of hide-and-seek now, bro, and we have to find you. Or else, you’re dead, we’re dead, everyone else is dead.’” Alabaster snorts. “That’s definitely  _ not  _ Diane.”

“Is your bed not triple-warded against mental invasions?”

Alabaster tilts his head. 

Then springs from the couch. 

He searches among the runes—invisible to anyone’s eyes except for his—inked on their apartment’s door. The bedroom door. He walks into the bedroom and flips on the switch. The headboard. 

“It  _ is  _ triple-warded,” he says in confusion. “Then how did they get that memory if they hadn’t poked around in my head?”

“Perhaps she gave them access to the memory,” Dr. Claymore suggests. “And from what I understand about dreamwalking, only a few demigods are able to do it consciously.”

“Yeah,” he says breathlessly.

_ Diane is alive.  _

His chest feels so full he could’ve floated up to the heavens. 

“Alabaster?”

He jerks back to reality. “Yes. Yes… Usually they’re the kids of the Underworld gods.”

“Well, then that narrows down our list of suspects. Who has godly heritage that would allow them to walk the dreamscape, has been affiliated with Diane Stone, and has been familiar with you at some point in time?”

Trepidation fills him. It’s been so long since he’s made contact with an actual demigod society. He’s been on his own for six years and counting. So much could have changed. 

But if he had to venture a guess… 

His brain screeches to a halt like a chariot with a broken axle. On their trembling last legs, his braincells scramble to connect the information. His mental wheels have come off from the sides. 

Suddenly, a lonely kind of exhaustion overtakes Alabaster. 

“What time did you say it was again?” he asks Dr. Claymore. 

“Three in the morning.”

He feels so old. Much older than twenty-two years old. Old and tired. “Wake me up in an hour. We’ll need to leave soon.”

Dr. Claymore’s brow furrows. “Are we in danger?”

“When are we not?” Alabaster snorts. “It’s not that urgent. But someone is definitely after us, and I won’t stay to find out if they have peaceful intentions in mind for me. We still don’t know if Diane was forced to give up that memory.”

“Understood. I’ll start packing our library.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea. If it’s anything they’re after, it might be one of our studies.” He heads back into the bedroom. 

“You don’t think they’re after you in particular?” Dr. Claymore says. 

“I can fend for myself. Those studies can’t. If they fall into the wrong hands…” Alabaster exhales. “Well, let’s not consider that possibility.”

“So have you figured out who your third party is?”

“I’m sure the demigod world has changed a lot in six years, but I… I have my suspicions.”

“I see.” 

Head still reeling from that realization, Alabaster leaves Dr. Claymore in the living room. 

Well… the polite thing would be to reply to the message, right?

With that being the only thought in his head, he blacks out as soon as his shoulder hits his mattress.

* * *

“Seriously? She’s the only one you guys managed to pick up?”

Ethan punches him in the shoulder. “You try going out there yourself, you glow stick. And besides, the area was basically a ghost town. I’m relieved that we actually managed to pick up one.”

“Listen, it’s Luke’s order that I keep a low profile as much as possible. If I start showing up on our missions, Camp will find a pattern.” Alabaster sighs. “Well, better to have one than none. Luke would have our heads.”

“It’s not really Luke that’s giving out orders now, is it?” Ethan mumbles. Alabaster dishes out the punch this time. 

“Be quiet,” he hisses, eyes darting to the  _ dracanae  _ guarding the doors. “Go back to Luke. I’m sure he’s expecting his bodyguard.”

Ethan’s remaining working eye narrows and stares hard at the wall. “You keeping a low profile  _ was  _ Luke’s order. Who I’m serving now  _ isn’t  _ Luke.” He makes his way to the suite door. “He’s gone, Alabaster. The sooner you accept it, the better.”

Alabaster turns away to hide the fact that his face is threatening to crumple in on itself. His heart had, a long time ago. “Accompany him,” he orders the  _ dracanae.  _

“Sir, the girl—”

“I’m the most powerful demigod of my generation—I’m sure I can handle a fresh recruit,” he snaps. “Accompany Nakamura.”

He waits for the door to close and for the footsteps to fade before facing the girl seated at the head of the long wooden table. The Diane from seven years ago had been pale and bug-eyed, and her eyes look impossibly bigger as she takes in the luxurious furnishings of Alabaster’s suite. 

“What’s your name?”

Her eyes snap away from the abstract painting hanging a few feet to her right. “Diane Stone.”

Back when he was sixteen and in the actual situation, he had been thinking about how grateful he was that unlike other recruits who’d thought they were smart, she didn’t question why monsters like the  _ dracanae  _ and a buff guy like Ethan answered to a scrawny teen, thus removing the need for a demonstration. But now, he uses the stretch of silence to study the way the coral sunset bounced off the wooden paneling of the suite’s walls, the way the blend of warm tones wash onto Diane’s profile. 

_ A little color does a lot of good for you _ , he almost says. He says instead, “How’d you know you were a demigod? Ethan has given you the rundown, right?”

“I always know when someone is gonna die. And…” 

Alabaster tunes out after that. Other than that first part, which had seemed and always will seem odd, even for demigods, it was just the usual red flags of being half-divine. 

Her clothes are way too big for her, he notes. Have they always been that baggy? Suddenly, he regrets not having taken her out shopping when he had the chance to. She deserved clothes that actually fit her and didn’t look like they’d be blown away by the wind… 

He obeys the script for the next few minutes, repeating the same monologue he had regaled her with about the Titan Army’s cause seven years ago. What he  _ doesn’t _ obey, though, is the fact that his past self had remained on the other side of the table when talking to her in an attempt to create a feeling of distance and  _ difference  _ between them. This time around, he gravitates towards her, not unlike the dust particles swirling in the stripes of sunlight streaming across the surfaces of his suite. One of them lands on the delicate edge of the curl of her fringe, and without thinking, he reaches out to pick it up. 

Dream-Diane looks up at him with wide eyes, and his heart skips a beat. 

“Uh. There was. Dust in your hair.”

In his previous dream, this was around the time when Diane had broken off from the memory and started spouting nonsense about needing to find him and… something about the demigod defectors—those who had fought under him during the Second Titan War. But it had been clear that whoever had cast the dream hadn’t been experienced in dreamwalking; the memory had only held for a few seconds after the distortion of reality, the deviation from fact, and Diane’s sentences had ended up garbled before warping to black alongside the rest of the dream. 

Fortunately for him, being Hecate’s most powerful kid of this generation (and an all-around nerd for anything related to magic), Alabaster could hold the seams of the dream together well enough. With barely a shiver of the heat waves in the air, it continued as he dragged it on. 

This memory was his to look back on and reminisce. Well, his and Diane’s. 

(He tries not to think too hard about the ugly feeling that rises at the thought of someone else witnessing, much less  _ participating,  _ in this private exchange meant for the two of them only.

The possibility that it may be the person he suspects only makes his blood boil harder. From anger or shame, he’s not sure. Maybe both.)

Eventually, the time comes when he’s done with his little orientation, and Diane is standing up from her chair. She’s the same height as him—Alabaster wonders if she’s grown in the time they were apart, and if she would be taller than him by now. 

“Welcome to the rebellion, Diane Stone,” he tells her with a cocky smile. Her bloodshot eyes twitch when the sunlight hits them. 

“I… I have a question. If I… let’s say, had someone to take care of, then I could give them my weekly living allowance, right? I’d still be provided for on this cruise.”

“Yes. We’ll help you find a way to ship it.”

Just like that, tension completely floods out of Diane’s posture. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me.”

_ I do,  _ he thinks, then he promptly stops thinking when she offers him a tiny smile. Tiny, but genuine. 

With that, she heads towards the door. 

He watches her, an ache blooming in his chest. 

_ Just a little longer _ , he promises himself. 

When she’s about to put her hand on the doorknob, he takes a deep breath. 

“Stop,” he commands. 

She stops as he wills. 

“Who are you?” he demands. “And why are you looking for me?”

The dream gives a threatening stutter; paintings fall and never hit the floor, the ceiling caves upwards, and the sunlight shifts from ethereal orange to blindingly yellow-white. 

Alabaster clenches his fist, and though the walls of his suite are now bare, the ceiling turns flat again. The sunlight refuses to cooperate, however. He has to squint through the glare as he approaches Dream Diane’s back. 

“I better have a full explanation the next time I close my eyes,” he intones, “and it better be from Diane herself.”

His hand hovers near her shoulder blades, where a clump of Mist so thick that it almost looks like a tangible scarf—to Alabaster, anyway—hangs. 

“And just to prove that it’s really me,” he continues, “and that I’m acting of my own free will.”

He grabs at the Mist and yanks hard. 

Before the thing underneath the Mist can be revealed, though, Alabaster lets go of the dream. The walls come crashing down on them, and the wooden floor gives way beneath his feet. 

Well. He has less than an hour to sleep now. Might as well make use of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i may or may not have fucked something up in the original chapter 7... and besides i have nothing to do in this quarantine but write, now that all my academic obligations have gone to shit :)
> 
> i would just like to share that i got extreme secondhand embarrassment writing alabaster... the dude is pretty much the most powerful demigod in his era, but he's also just a boy who's barely had time to mature in between the wars and the consequences of his status. in my head, it made sense that he would feel too much about too many things—about almost everything, actually. 
> 
> anyways, hope you are all doing well during these trying times :(( stay safe and wash your hands, lovelies!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor takes a trip down memory lane. Annabeth, as usual, is the only one who has her shit together.

So far, Connor and Diane’s to-do list for their not-quest looks like this:

  1. IM Percy and Annabeth to find out what they plan to do at Olympus
  2. Find Alabaster
  3. ????

Basically, they have no idea what they’re doing. 

Connor can admit that much to himself as he fiddles with the underbelly of one of Camp’s vans. For all his experience from the Titan and Giant Wars, he’s never once had to go against the gods’ will. And that meant a lot of things: no Oracle, no divine favors, no special assistance via weapons, transportation, or information. They were on their own, and they were looking for a needle in the haystack—except the needle also happened to be capable of completely disappearing within the haystack and cloning multiple haystacks as red herrings. And while they tried to figure out which haystack was the right one, they would also have the might of the Olympians breathing down their necks. 

But if there’s anything Connor is good at, it’s improvising. One didn’t become the brains of the greatest prankster duo Camp Half-Blood has seen in three millennia without going in blind sometimes. 

Footsteps break him out of his brainstorming session. He glances sideways to see tightly laced up combat boots in the space between the ground and the bottom of the car. 

_ No one in their right mind actually wore combat boots in the midst of the summer weather, even though the weather in Camp was regulated. He turned to look up, but pale hands suddenly reached out to grab Rosie. _

_ Well, aren’t you a familiar sight?  _ he wryly thinks.

Quick as lightning, one foot reaches forward and hooks itself under the rolling platform he’s laying on. Connor yelps as the ground moves from underneath him, then groans at the sudden intrusion of sunlight into his vision. 

“Ow, man, what the fuck?” He sighs dramatically and throws an arm over his eyes. “Gods save me, I think I’ve gone blind. Hey! You better be responsible for my hospital and rehabilitation bills! Our healthcare system won’t do shit—”

A weight is placed on top of his chest. He peers at his trusty tactical backpack. 

“We’re leaving.”

“Yes, yes. Lemme just—” He reaches under the van to give one of the screws a final nudge before slowly sitting up. “Did you do what I said?”

She nods. “We’ll meet Percy and Annabeth on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

“Ugh, I love the food trucks there, they’re the best. Hey, you should try the halal food trucks’ chicken and lamb over rice. I order it all the time.” He marches to the front of the Camp garage and slides open the door of the frontmost van. “Alright, drop your shit, let’s go,” he says, gesturing to the  _ kopis  _ strapped across her back. 

Diane just gives him a strange look, so he shrugs and flings his backpack into the second row of seats. “Suit yourself. I’m the one carrying most of our supplies anyway.”

They climb up into their seats, Connor in the driver’s side and Diane in the passenger’s, and Diane  _ still  _ doesn’t take the sheathes off her shoulders, even as she sits down and the ends of the sheaths stretch out against the seat. 

“Isn’t that uncomfortable?” Connor comments, turning the key in the ignition. The engine roars to life. He smiles, elated to feel the rush of stepping on the gas again. 

“For emergencies,” Diane says. “You never know. Also, seatbelts.”

“Right, because you’d be able to reach the hilt of your sword through the seatbelt,” Connor snorts. Diane blinks, wide-eyed, and concedes to putting the swords beside her knee. “See? It’s like you’ve never ridden a car before. How do you even go places?”

Diane stares out the windshield as they round the crest of Half-Blood Hill. On the right, everything is sprawled out in the heart of the verdant valley: the wooden and worn cabins, the plumes of smoke rising from Cabin Nine, and the numerous silhouettes sprinting across the volleyball courts. 

Oh, and there’s also the various figures crowding in the garage behind them, jumping into the vans and trying to jumpstart the other vans. The vehicles only give a mighty tremble before the dashboard blows up to give way to the airbag—except Connor had cut up the airbags, stuffed flour (mixed with green food coloring, of course!) into them, and then loosely stitched them back together. Connor allows himself a good laugh at the green plumes rising in the rearview mirror. 

“Oh, man, I missed that,” he mumbles to himself. 

Sometimes, Connor wonders why he left in the first place. Camp Half-Blood had always been the home away from home, the place where he’d found his real, lifelong friends, and had become so much more than an average person would have ever hoped to be. 

Then rationality and logic take over, and he’s set once more on his decision. 

When they diverge from the crest of the hill and begin going downwards, towards civilization once more, Diane finally replies, “I walk.”

“ _ Walk?!  _ We’ve evolved into the age of technology, and you walk?!”

She shifts in her seat. “Well, I’ve been on the  _ Princess Andromeda.  _ Advanced enough.”

Connor’s fingers halt on the wheel. “Ah. Right.”

He thinks back on the magic-induced dream he had in the Hypnos Cabin. She’d given him full control over her body, except the body in question was her fifteen-year-old self meeting Alabaster Torrington for the first time. If anything, he was thankful that he hadn’t been in his own body—he probably would’ve erupted into hives from how strongly he had mentally recoiled from looking at Alabaster. 

It hadn’t helped that the memory had been embellished with an incredibly thorough attention to detail. Every grain in the woodwork of Alabaster’s suite on the cruise, every word he’d said, the exact number of  _ dracanae  _ guarding the door had all been faithfully replicated in a way impossible if even just one detail had gone unforgotten. Connor had nearly forgotten that he was just in a dream. 

Oddly enough, the original memory itself didn’t seem to hold anything odd or outstanding. It was what it seemed: two people introducing themselves to one another. Aside from the identity of whom Diane was meeting, she had no other reason to treasure it with such great sentimentality. 

“What are you and Alabaster?” he decides to ask, not having the face to look at her. 

“We dated during the Titan War,” she answers, all blasé as you please. 

Lamia’s words echo in his head:  _ “Sadly, if anyone can find Alabaster, it’s you, not me. You’re really still in love with him, after all these years.”  _ “Past tense?”

“We never saw each other again after his exile.”

“Ah, right. His exile. ‘Forbidden to knowingly make contact with any demigod, lest he corrupt them.’ How long were you guys dating?”

“Seven months.”

“Oh? How long had you guys known each other when you started dating?”

“Four months.”

He gives her a surprised glance. “You guys knew each other for a year, and you still have feelings for that runt?”

He should really give more consideration to the fact that the hilts of her deadly  _ kopis  _ hover a mere three inches from her hand. Her words are clipped when she snipes, “Well, you were my companion every second for four months only  _ five years ago _ , and you can’t even remember the fact that we’ve had this exact same conversation before.”

Connor doesn’t bother to add onto the fact that he remembers nearly nothing from their acquaintanceship, so they fall into a tense silence after that. 

Now that he remembers Diane, he tries to dredge up a few more facts about her from his incredibly flighty hippocampus. He starts with the reason for her “supervision”:

In the aftermath of the Battle of Manhattan, Percy’s plea for amnesty on behalf of the traitor demigods had prevented a lot of the conflict that might have arisen between them and the “loyalist” demigods. But not all of it—one of the events that the more malicious campers liked to put their spins on was Alabaster’s trial, the possible outcomes of which they would then use to taunt the traitor demigods. 

In order to make Alabaster’s trial look fair, the Olympians decided to secretly select a single demigod to witness the whole proceeding. The demigod, who would of course have been loyal to the Olympians during the war, would also have sufficient knowledge of Alabaster’s deeds, and as someone who was directly affected by them, would be granted the power to decide on his sentence, given that it was reasonable by the Olympians’ measure. 

The demigod’s identity was kept secret; this way, the Olympians would get away with breaking their oath to Percy, and Percy would never know whom to pinpoint if the scheme was found out. Only they had knowledge of whether or not the sentence that the gods had announced, exile, was actually true. Of course, as the years passed, reports of Alabaster’s magical signature were verified by Hecate kids like Lou Ellen, and the campers figured that Alabaster was in fact alive. But it had been nonetheless difficult to dispel gossip that Alabaster had been incinerated right then and there on the floors of the Olympian throne room, that he had been turned completely mortal as punishment, sent to Tartarus, so on and so forth. 

It was only second to the tale of how a certain daughter of Thanatos nearly flattened Mount Olympus after she somehow found out about Alabaster’s sentence. 

That night, Olympus was almost completely drained of life. The green groves and avenues that all made up the glimmering paradise wilted, and the servants of the Olympians and minor gods who lived on the mountain turned into shrivelled bags of skin and ichor. The structures, sustained by the gods’ power and the more overlooked spirits under their domain, the dryads and the satyrs, caved inwards—the temples, the statues, the topsoil of the garden plants—and all twelve of the Olympians had felt it in their cores. 

And by cores, Connor meant their thrones. Fissures had split the already damaged throne room into quarters, and the cracks ran up the individual thrones of the gods. Those who had palaces away from Olympus immediately fled to escape the blow. 

Despite the fact that she was eventually subdued, the gods had been so terrified that they suppressed her powers and tossed her to Chiron. They didn’t dare risk banishing her; they didn’t want to risk her wrath—or her father’s, for that matter—or the possibility that she would seek out Alabaster on her own. 

They just counted themselves lucky that she hadn’t figured out the maximum extent of her powers before the Olympians’ victory. 

Needless to say, though the demigod who had been summoned for Alabaster’s trial was the only mortal to witness it in person, the other demigods had seen the effects from far away. They would whisper about it among themselves as a warning to never trust any of the traitor demigods, and each of their stories would be different. 

When demigods are told that Diane nearly levelled the gods’ domain of power, they usually imagine physical displays of power, like Percy and his hydrokinesis, or Thalia and her flashing lightning. The closest comparison they had was Nico; most people figured that being the daughter of Thanatos gave Diane pretty similar powers to the son of Hades’. 

They couldn’t have been more wrong. When Nico arrives at the scene of a battle, you  _ know  _ he’s coming. The shadows congeal into darkness and drag down the temperatures. The ground cracks open and bones clamber out, decked in whatever ornamental armor of whatever era in history. The monsters cower, and the hellhounds howl to stand at attention. 

Diane was the wrongness in the atmosphere: the prickling goosebumps on your arm, the heavy pressure between your shoulder blades, the slow damp spread of a stale piece of bread’s taste and weight on your tongue. 

And even though Connor hadn’t stayed conscious long enough to remember anything, he could confidently say that none of the recycled gossip ever captured the depth and magnitude of the absolute horror that Diane Stone transformed into that night. 

There was a groaning chill that stayed ringing in his ears for months after; even when his sleep was the endless, thoughtless, comforting kind, he’d wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, his heart beating wildly in his chest. 

Chiron rationalized it as the fear of death coming for him in his slumber. 

Then in the summer that followed, in the midst of the  _ Argo II  _ construction, a collared and chained waif of a girl was handed over to him. 

But he couldn’t refuse, because  _ no one knew _ . Not Chiron, not Travis, and definitely not Diane. 

He remembers wanting to laugh until he puked. 

He also remembers thinking that she might kill him in his sleep if she ever found out, powers or no powers. The fear of Death coming for him in his sleep, indeed. 

Over the next four months, he must’ve grown less terrified of her, seeing as she was nothing more than a passing name in his brain. The events of the Giant War might’ve been a factor, too, and it definitely helped that he never actually saw her face before she came to Camp Half-Blood. And when he did, he found it difficult to associate her sad, sickly face to a massive onslaught of death—everyone did. 

Connor wonders now, with that same girl sitting quietly beside him in the van, if she ever found out after she left Camp Half-Blood.  _ But the chances of that are low— _ so he starts wondering instead what she would do to him one she knew. 

He wonders if she would forgive him, blasé as she always is, or if she’ll bring on the torrent of pure rage she displayed at Olympus. 

“Hey, Diane,” he begins, “I’m gonna pick up some paint and paint rollers. Can’t ride around with the Camp business logo splashed on our side.”

No response. “I’m assuming that you’re gonna help me paint, ‘cuz this is a team effort. Amirite?” 

He flashes her with a bright smile, only to see that her head has lolled to the other side, and her chest is rising and falling in deep intervals. 

“Seriously, we just slept a few minutes ago. Are you  _ that  _ sleepy?” He huffs. “I bet you didn’t sleep on the train. That’s what you get for being all proud and going guard-dog mode… Are all of you grim reapers like this?”

They’re already heading into the suburban area of Long Island, and Connor hits the brake at their first stoplight. Sighing, he reaches up to flip down the sunvisor to shield her eyes from the glaring noon sun. 

“You Underworld kids and your daytime naps,” he mutters. He stretches over the gear shift and Diane’s lap to grope for the seat lever. “In the mortal world, they’d call you narcoleptics, but in the demigod world, genes are apparently an excuse. How unfair.”

He finally finds it and pushes back Diane’s seat to a nice, comfortable angle, just in time for him to step on gas again as the light shifts back to green. “Do you think they excuse Nico for napping in class at New Rome Uni?”

* * *

One errand and several extremely near brushes with road speed limits later, they make it to downtown Manhattan. They weave in and out of the throngs of tourists milling down the Museum Mile, Diane and Connor being shoved together closer than what the polite customs of Personal Space dictate. 

“Do you see them?” Connor shouts over the din. Without even glancing in their direction, she sticks out her pointer finger, landing perfectly on Percy’s and Annabeth’s huddled figures. 

He hooks his arm through hers. “Right. You ‘see’ them.” 

Her pace falters as he drags her away from her stride. One second later, her feet have planted themselves once more on the ground, and he almost falls on his ass. “What? The lovebirds can enjoy their date for a little while longer, let’s get food.” At her pinched look, he sighs. “Okay, listen. The line looks long, but believe me, these people work  _ fast. _ ” 

Connor guesses the smell of sizzling shawarma is enough to convince her, because he’s able to pull her to the back of the line. There are only ten to fifteen people in front of him—definitely not the busiest work day this food truck has seen. Diane still looks reluctant. 

He lets go of her arm to produce his wallet. “Diane, I’m sure Alabaster Torrington, of all people, can handle us waiting in line for a few minutes. He’s not exactly a damsel in distress, is he? And we can’t save everyone on an empty stomach. Bet you’ve barely eaten since you started chasing Lamia. When did you last eat?”

“I’m used to it,” she says in lieu of an answer. He clicks his tongue. 

“I’m surprised those guns haven’t atrophied yet,” he quips, eyeing her arms. Connor remembers very well how brutally and quickly she could strike with her  _ kopis _ , delivering one blow after the other without so much as batting an eye. “Well, I, thank you very much for asking, haven’t eaten since yesterday morning, thanks to your impromptu visit.”

“You should’ve eaten lunch,” she mumbles. 

“Nah, I was cramming my shit at the dorm into boxes. I put everything off at the last minute. Besides, it was my graduation day. Didn’t wanna look puffy in the pics.”

They’re nearing the front of the line. He just barely catches Diane’s sigh of, “I’m sorry I disrupted your  _ normal _ life.” 

Connor’s sure it was meant to sound sarcastic, except that there’s genuine regret and something else bleeding into her tone. Something like resignation. 

He shrugs. “You didn’t force me to put it on hold.” He pauses. “I think three old knitting ladies did.”

That earns him a huff, which (and this time he was sure!) would’ve been a laugh if it were from a more expressive person. 

They arrive at the front of the truck. “And what will you guys be having?” the cashier asks them, all loud and authentic New Yorker. 

“Hmm, I’ll get the chicken and falafel platter for a change,” he tells the cashier. “I’m not sure if she’s going to—“

“I’ll have the chicken and lamb over rice,” she cuts in. 

“Alright,” the cashier chirps. “Any sides, desserts, or drinks you guys might want?

“Just some extra white sauce and hummus for me. Oh, and bottled water.”

Diane shrugs. “Same for me.”

Connor’s eyebrows hitch upwards as he hands over the money. 

They get their order in less than two minutes, and Connor leaves as generous a tip as their budget allows before striding up the steps of the Metropolitan. 

“Made us wait to take her out, I see,” Percy snipes, but there’s no real heat behind his words. 

Connor snickers. “Could say the same for you, loverboy,” he retorts, gesturing at the Starbucks cups in each of their hands. Annabeth swipes out his leg from under him, but he manages to balance and sit on the other one without making a fool of himself. He sticks out his tongue at her. “Loser,” he taunts. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Annabeth laughs, snaking an ice-cold hand down the back of his shirt. He yells and nearly crushes the precious paper bag. 

Diane quickly yanks their orders out of the paper bag. She hands his platter over, which he proceeds to stuff his mouth with. 

“You’re a lifesaver,” he tries to say, but it comes out as, “Uhrr uh ruhthuhbr.”

She turns to Percy and Annabeth. “What do you have for us?”

“Right,” Annabeth says, and Percy’s eyebrows draw together. 

“I… may or may not have only remembered this last night,” she hedges. Percy pinches her in the side. “Ouch! That hurt, Seaweed Brain! Anyway, I—” She swallows. “Alabaster… might have visited me during that period of time when we were looking for Percy and Camp Jupiter?” she says meekly. 

Connor hears a sharp intake of breath from beside him. Diane’s fingers twitch around her utensils. 

“Holy shit,” he says in shock. “What did he say?”

“Apparently, he’d been looking for Percy for a good couple of months, said he had urgent news for him. He wanted to warn him about Gaea and the oncoming Giant War. Lamia had been chasing him for months on end, and she was one of Gaea’s lackeys—at least until he figured out how to prevent them from reforming, with or without Gaea’s help. Well, he came to me instead since he couldn’t find a trace of Percy.”

Connor arches an eyebrow. “Wow, you’d think that Alabaster would join Gaea, with how close she came to destroying the Olympians and all.”

“Alabaster is vengeful, but he believes in preserving cosmic balance,” Diane bites out. “Having Gaea cleanse the earth wouldn’t achieve that.”

“You’re right,” Connor says. Then, “Guess even he has limits. He definitely stopped at—how many casualties did Camp have again, Annabeth?—”

Diane stands up. Percy’s and Annabeth’s hands fly to their sides. 

“Sit down, Diane.” Connor shovels another spoonful of rice into his mouth. “We all have the same goal here.”

Annabeth narrows her eyes at him. 

“Anyway—” He turns to Percy— “How did the great Architect of Olympus  _ completely  _ forget about meeting a person as—ahem, striking—as our dear Alabaster is?”

Percy shrugs. “Well, considering his powers as Hecate’s kid, I’m guessing that he cast some Mist to make Annabeth forget exactly who she was talking to, considering his punishment and all that. But he cast it too strong and the memory got almost entirely buried.”

“Whom,” corrects Annabeth, “and yes, you’d be correct about that assumption. I remember my vision going hazy then I blacked out.”

“This doesn’t help us,” murmurs Diane, crossing her arms. She looks over her shoulder. “This happened five years ago.”

“Please let me finish,” Annabeth says. Diane turns to face her, and they hold each other’s gazes for a frosty second. Percy shoots Connor a “ _ Mommy-I’m-scared _ ” look. When Diane approaches them again to sit down on the stone steps, Percy’s fist tightens his jean pocket. 

“As I was saying—” Connor almost laughs at how done Annabeth sounds.

“He was with a man. He called him ‘Dr. Claymore.’ And I encountered him just outside of New Jersey. Judging from the trajectory of our travel, I think it would’ve been safe to say that he came from somewhere upstate.”

Lightbulbs go off inside Connor’s head. “Did he mention a first name?” 

Annabeth shakes her head. “It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe you can trace him.”

“The guy can pretty much teleport, Wise Girl,” Percy cautions. “Maybe—”

“No, no, no,” Connor cuts him off. “We’re onto something here. I just—do any of you have a state map? I left mine inside the car.”

“What do you think of me?” Annabeth says haughtily, and, bless her soul, produces one from her backpack. “I always have a plan.”

“Or in this case, a map,” Connor quips. He wipes his oily hands on the paper bag. “Thank you.”

“What is it?” Diane says softly, as if almost daring to hope. 

“Dr. Claymore—he sounds familiar. Now, maybe, if I can connect his name to a place—”

His finger lands on a nearly microscopic dot on the map. 

_ Keeseville.  _

“Holy shit,” Connor mumbles. “I know who he was with.”

Annabeth’s eyes widen. “How—”

“We read  _ very  _ different books, Annabeth. You read physics and art and architecture shit, I read human behavior. Psychology, mythology, et cetera et cetera,” he rambles. “Dr. Howard Claymore was a leading figure in the field of thanatology before he disappeared from Keeseville five years. When did you meet Alabaster, Annabeth?”

“Early April.”

“Well.” Connor throws his hands up. “That’s barely two weeks from when Dr. Claymore was reported missing. Shame about that, too. I liked his books.”

“Thanatology—he studies  _ death _ ?” Percy asks. “Why?”

All of them glance at Diane. 

“Maybe Dr. Claymore somehow helped Alabaster discover the spell he needed to prevent Lamia from reforming,” Connor suggests. “Going off from the stuff he writes about, I mean.”

Diane swallows her food and mumbles something under her breath. 

Percy frowns. “What?”

A dash of pink appears across her cheeks. “If he wanted to keep her from reforming, he should’ve just asked me,” she mumbles. Her tone is almost petulant. “It’s how she ended up dying anyway.”

Connor remembers the way Diane literally split Lamia in half with little more than a flex of her arms. Annabeth and Percy must, too, judging the way they subconsciously lean away from her. 

“Right.” Connor clears his throat. “So. If this is all a big set of coincidences I’m going to laugh then maybe put myself in an eight-month sleep, ala Percy Jackson.” The man in question facepalms. “But, I guess Diane and I now know where to start, thanks to you guys.”

“We know I’m the reason you boys are still alive today,” Annabeth replies. Connor scoffs. 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night. Anyway, what’s the plan upstairs?”

Percy grins. “Okay, okay. So, Annabeth is on an approved visit to inspect the construction and repair sites on Olympus. That’s the official reason. It’s because my girlfriend is the Architect of Olympus.”

Connor resists the urge to vomit at the glowing heart emojis Percy is practically emitting. “And the real reason?”

He doesn’t stop grinning. “I’m here to cash in my endless Olympian favors. You have any you want me to cash in, Con-man?”

“If I’m going to cash in on those—hey, I’m not saying I have any!—I’d rather do it myself, thanks very much. What exactly are you going to ask for in return?”

“Hm. I was thinking about a renewal of their victory oath to me. And if I have any left, maybe free wedding-and-honeymoon arrangement services—”

Annabeth hits his arm. Her face has gone beet red. “Percy!”

He snickers. “I’m just kidding, Wise Girl. I’d never go around your back like that. I’d make sure to do it in front of your face. Under your nose, maybe.” Another hit to the arm. 

“Alright, Diane, I think it’s time to leave the couple alone!” Connor says loudly. “Off to Keeseville we go.”

“Thank you for all your help,” says Diane, already shoving their plates and bottles into the paper bag. In spite of her face being as blank as ever, her flitting hands speak for themselves. “Good luck upstairs.”

“Good luck with Connor,” Annabeth says dryly. “Percy and I should get going, too. Hope what we told you helped.”

  
  


“I hope so, too,” Connor mumbles. "Say hi to Travis and Katie for me when you get the chance."

Diane glances over her shoulder at him as they make their way down the steps. 

* * *

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier about Alabaster,” Connor amends, a couple of hours into the road. “But I want you to know that I meant it. And I won’t apologize for that.”

Keeseville was five hours away from downtown Manhattan, and Connor hadn’t been able to bear with the thought of spending all of them in tense silence, all the while sitting beside someone who could snap his neck with one hand tied behind her back. In the best-case scenario. 

Unsurprisingly, he receives no answer, but he doesn’t let it deter him. He continues, “I used to be close to him, you know. Back when everything was sunshine and flowers, and the worst thing that could happen was getting lost inside the Camp forest alone. I mean, not that it’s something that you’d want to happen to you, but that’s beside the point. He was a little shit, and he continued to be a little shit even after he betrayed—or rather, left—Camp.

“And maybe that’s why I hated him so much. Even during the war, I couldn’t completely disown him as my friend because… well, he was still the same old Alabaster, you know? Same old Alabaster who was a nerd about magic because there was nothing for him to study. Fucker knew one time that I was leading a mission to sabotage a weapons exchange, and he placed the meet-up point in the backroom of a supermarket freezer. You know why? Because he knows I get cold easily and I was going through a vegan phase. God, it smelled  _ rotten _ , and I nearly pissed myself.” 

Connor exhales harshly through his nose. “That’s putting aside how many kids he pulled over from Camp to Kronos’ side. What I mean is, it’s not just something you can forgive, even after so many years.”

“Then why are you doing this?” she says, blankly staring straight ahead. 

Connor tries for a smile, but the ends of his mouth waver. “Like I said. He continued to be a little shit, and as of now, he’s  _ still  _ being a little shit. Gods, who the hell just goes off the grid for years on end, then causes enough trouble for the Olympians to hunt him down?”

Ahead of them, the sun is starting to set. From behind the steering wheel, Connor imagines that they’re driving straight towards not Apollo’s Maserati (or whatever designer brand he’s taken to this time around), but just a flaming ball of hot gas. It makes it much simpler. 

“Did you mean what you said earlier?” Diane murmurs. 

The dark blue of the night is beginning to wash over them. She looks all the paler for it. “What did I say?”

“That we have the same goal.”

He shrugs. “I knew—I  _ know _ —too many of them.”

Diane reaches for the paper bag of their leftovers from where it’s been sitting on the dashboard the whole afternoon, the two of them having left some under the glare of the sun to warm up for their dinner. She takes out one platter and hands over the other to him. 

“Thanks.” Eyes sticking to the road, Connor stuffs his mouth.

He looks over at Diane. “I think you gave me the wrong platter.”

“You would’ve asked for a bite sooner or later,” she replies. 

He snorts. “Alright,” he concedes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there we have it!! a little backstory on diane, a glimpse of connor's feelings about this whole shebang with alabaster, and their first step on this quest!! a round of applause for their singular shared braincell, everyone!
> 
> next chapter is them officially getting down to business! finally! connor and diane arrive where alabaster's post-kronos life begins: keeseville. 
> 
> for those who might be confused about alabaster's backstory, i'd recommend reading The Son of Magic just for a refresher, or even just vising his pjo wikia page! but i'd love to give a brief summary:
> 
> -alabaster was banished for urging his mother to continue fighting against the gods and goes on the run  
-for seven to eight months (taken directly from the book) lamia chases him  
-he meets dr. claymore in keeseville and asks for his help killing lamia bc she won't stay dead  
-lamia meets claymore, shit goes down, claymore helps alabaster realize that he can bind lamia to the earth in disintegrated form to prevent her from reforming  
-lamia kills claymore, hecate uses her magic to separate lamia and alabaster and to turn claymore into a mistform guardian  
-alabaster wakes up in a field to see a newly revived claymore. claymore helps him get up and they go off to "do some research"
> 
> percy and annabeth are going up to olympus to try and shorten connor and diane's mission, but will they succeed?? hm.
> 
> meanwhile, travis is having a great time being taken care of by katie and ms. stoll. i headcanon that he's a total mama's boy in all the good ways, and katie is super endeared by how he treats his mother—and women in general! like, you can't tell me that travis and connor stoll were complete frat boys while they were hermes cabin counsellors. those boys are bundles of chaos, but they would never cause mayhem for unsavory reasons. (actually, connor would, solely for revenge.) maybe i could write a side-shot of travis being all dramatic and swooning into katie's arms. heh.
> 
> sidenote, i saw a tumblr post once about the stolls ranking the girls in chb according to their appearance and i just. gasped and erased it from my eyes. I Do Not See. I Do Not Accept. 
> 
> hope everyone is doing well during this pandemic!! stay safe and wash your hands <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keeseville seems to turn out to be a ghost town. Diane raises some ghosts and and gives Connor multiple heart attacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning/s: slightly graphic descriptions of corpses, their smell, and the gross animals that come with them (e.g. maggots), small panic attack, mention of smoking cigarettes, referenced recreational drug use, vomiting

They’re surrounded by nothing but nothingness, nothing but the endless black skies above them and the unfathomable stretch of grass on either side of them, caging them in the singular line of concrete they’re on, when, out of the blue, Diane says, “Something’s wrong. I can’t feel out any lifeforms.”

“We’ve been on the road for hours now, why are you telling me this—”

Diane lifts her index finger. Up ahead, there’s the faintest impression of a road sign. Connor has to squint to see it, since it’s trying to be a blacker black than night. 

“We should be nearing Keeseville. There are no humans or even monsters within a ten-mile radius.” She looks at him. “Something’s wrong.”

Now that Diane’s pointed it out, Connor takes notice of the non-functional street lamps near the sign. In the stretch leading up to that point, the yellow glow goes from blinding to pitiful. 

“Get the flashlight in my backpack,” he tells her. After some rummaging, she hands it over to him, and he pulls up the van beside the last street lamp producing light. He gets out of the car and swings the light up to the bulb.

Or rather, what’s left of it. There’s no longer any protective glass covering the inner parts; even the copper filament has been snapped, the barest thread of wire being the only bridge keeping the electricity flowing. He casts light on the adjacent street lamps, and they’re all in a similar condition. 

As he gets back in the car, he can’t help but say, “I don’t feel good about this.” But he steps on the gas anyway, in spite of the coiled anxiety in his gut. 

Gods, he hasn’t felt that instinct of  _ DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!  _ so strongly in a while. 

“Whatever happened wasn’t a recent occurrence. There would’ve been some glass shards of even any sort of debris on the way here. There should’ve been at least some—that’s a  _ lot  _ of streetlights.” His hand tightens on the wheel. “The wind’s swept them all away. And it’s had plenty of time to blow all that mess out of here. Now, the question is: What caused it, and why hasn’t anyone come to fix them?”

The van’s headlight touches the city sign. It’s a standard green city sign, nothing remarkable about it, except that rust has crawled all over the words. Without it, it would’ve already been hard enough for the two of them to read it; now, it’s impossible. If Connor weren’t so confident in his map-reading skills (what with his father being the god of travelers and all), he would’ve turned the van around. 

Diane bolts up in her seat. She unbuckles her seatbelt and straps on her  _ kopis  _ sheaths. “There’s been countless deaths here. That’s why I can’t feel any lifeforms.”

“ _ What?! _ ” Connor yells. “Are you telling me that they’re all  _ dead?! _ ”

She points at something in the passing scenery through the darkness yet again. This time, no matter how much he tries to squint through the windshield, he can’t make out shit. 

“What… am I supposed to be seeing?” he deadpans. It’s fucking pitch black out there!

Diane turns to him a blank look, before saying a few seconds later, “Oh. You can’t see in the dark.”

Connor is confused, then he realizes that she’s also confused (how was he supposed to know, her face hadn’t so much as twitched!), primarily because of his confusion. Then, also: “Wait, you can  _ see in the dark?! _ ”

“Pull over here,” she directs. Miffed at her lack of an answer and still a bit confused, he brakes as abruptly as he possibly can, but she doesn’t even wait for the van to stop before jumping out and walking fast—walking fast, not running! Seriously?!—towards a dilapidated house. 

As far as Connor can tell, it’s the first house out on the village perimeter. Once, it might have been a homey wooden bungalow, not unlike the Big House back at Camp, but it’s now reduced to a splintered heap of planks and mildew-covered wallpaper. Weeds have overtaken the floorboards, and he thinks he spots a few mushrooms in the farthest corner of the room, where it’s darkest and suspiciously smelly. 

He jogs over to the side of the house and beams his flashlight down the block. The other houses, made out of concrete unlike this one, look even worse—Connor’s briefly reminded of the post-World War Two Berlin photos his professor projected onto the screen in one of his classes. Whatever paint covered the bricks was long gone, leaving behind an endless row of ghostly greys and whites barely visible in the darkness. A good hundred meters away, he spots a staircase that was meant to go up to three floors; now, the rotting rail and a couple of risers are the only thing left, slumped against the cracked wall behind it. Another house appears to still be complete, save for the missing roof. Upon closer inspection, the gaping maw of the side facing away from Connor makes it look more like a cross-section of a blueprint instead of an actual building. 

The hairs on the back of his neck prickle up.

“It looks like there was an explosion. The damage just gets worse the further you go into the village,” he calls out into the house. Not daring to turn off his flashlight, he steps over the now one-foot foundation of the house and peers through the damaged hallways. “I think we should follow the trail of damage.”

He ends up back at the front door of the house, where the van is still running. 

He clicks his tongue in irritation and locks it with the keys. And here he thought they would do a quick inspection. “Diane?” he yells. The wind whistles around him, stealing any echo of his voice. “Hello? Diane!”

Connor glances back at the van and swears violently. He pulls out the lockpicks from the band of his wristwatch, grasping onto  _ Flinkayt _ ’s and  _ Kavene _ ’s familiar handles with one hand each when they transform. 

“Diane! Where’d you go?!” He drops the bulky flashlight onto the ground and brings out a penlight from his pocket, holding it on top of  _ Flinkayt _ . Then he heads into the house.

_ If I swallow this by accident and die, I’m holding her responsible!  _ he snarls inwardly. He swings his head left and right like some wild animal and strides through the ruins. 

The foul smell from earlier introduces itself to his nostrils once again. He chokes on air and stops mid-stride, but it’s too late; his eyes are watering, and his head is spinning. It takes all of his strength to concentrate strength into his knees, which are threatening to turn into jello. 

He knows what this smell is. He became intimately familiar with it during the Titan War, and again during the Giant War. 

_ Fuck.  _ He shakes his head, gasping, but blood has begun roaring in his ears. He feels like he’s about to twitch out of his skin at every sensation—the dust particles around him, the slick moss grazing his ankle, the goosebumps rising on his neck and arms and chest. 

Blood. Old blood. Old blood and shit and piss and burnt hair, then throw in some rotting flesh and decaying wood, for that matter. 

His index finger strains around the penlight and  _ Flinkayt _ ’s handle towards his thumb. His other hand, trembling, clamps over his face to block out his vision and his smell. His breath is faltering against his palm, hot and heavy. 

He begins. “One, two, three—”

_ Index, middle, ring— _

“—four, five, six—”

_ —pinky, index, middle— _

“—seven, eight, nine—”

_ —ring, pinky, index— _

“—t-ten.” He takes a deep breath and tries again.  _ Firmer, with more conviction _ , he hears his therapist’s voice say. “Ten.  _ Ten. _ ”

_ Middle... Middle. Middle.  _

Connor repeats the whole process, this time backwards, and slowly, the hand covering his face drifts downwards. When he’s finished, he places the penlight between his teeth and bites down on it,  _ hard,  _ for the sensation. He wills himself to even out his breaths, pretending that the penlight is a cigarette, and each drag of smoke pulls nicotine and  _ calm  _ into his system. 

Tentatively, he takes a few steps, and when he finds that the ground won’t suck him into the world of the dead, he lopes through the house again, even as the smell gets worse and worse. He just keeps breathing through his nose and exhaling through his teeth. 

“Motherfucker,” he curses the mushrooms. Unsurprisingly, there’s a row of them, tracing the ground beside Connor’s steps. “I smoke you bitches for breakfast,” he taunts around the  cigarette penlight. “I smoke your family and cousins and second cousins and nephews and nieces once-removed for my morning snack. Then I smoke your ancestors for lunch…” He trails off. 

Soft chanting reaches his ears. 

_ “Soul of the deceased…“ _

“Diane?” he calls out, following her voice. 

“ _ I bid thee, in the name of my father to show thyself... ” _

Relief floods him. “Ah, you’re just doing your necromancer thing,” he sighs. “Thanks for warning me!”

She’s hunched over a mass in the corner. Judging by the obscene scent and the clumps of mushrooms disturbed by her feet, it’s a corpse she’s kneeling over. 

Connor tries his best to relax and not vomit. He approaches Diane and waits for her to rise before tapping her on the shoulder. “Next time, please warn me before you wander—GAH!”

Diane stares back at him with milky white eyes. She’s gripping his wrist, holding the sharp end of  _ Flinkayt  _ away from her face with ease. 

He hadn’t even noticed that he’d swung at her. He sheathes his daggers and takes the penlight out of his mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t know that your eyes did… that. Nico’s don’t.” Then he remembers why he was in this situation. “Hey! You’re not off the hook! You can’t just go off on your own without saying anything! What if there was a monster or something?!”

“It’s as I said. No monsters. Or lifeforms.” Even though all color has been sucked out of her irises, her eyes still reprimand,  _ Not listening, Connor Stoll.  _

She nods at something over his shoulder. He sighs, prepares himself for another near-cardiac arrest, and turns around. 

Okay. At least nothing can top Diane’s eyes. The ghost of the old man isn’t as creepy as he feared, and the worst thing about him is that he wears jorts with Crocs. The classic you-can-stick-cute-statement-pins-in-here Crocs. Even in his death. He looks the part of the quintessential white granddad, the type that said, “Kids these days!” and shook his head while thumbing through endless football channels. The only thing that gives away his… deadness… is the fact that he’s see-through. 

Diane says, “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” gripes White Granddad. “Why would I? Where am I? What’s happened to my house?!”

“Your name was Carson Gloverfield,” intones Diane. “You were 72 years old when you died. You were sitting in your living room, watching rugby—” Ah, so not football, then— “when your body was caught in an explosion, which was also strong enough to destroy your house.”

“And apparently, the rest of Keeseville,” Connor pitches in cheerily. 

Diane nods. “Now, I ask you.” She steps closer to the ghost. “Do you know who I am?”

Carson Gloverfield is at a loss for words. His head bobs up and down, validating their statements with their surroundings. When he turns back to Diane, his lifeless, translucent eyes go slack. His sagging jowls wobble as his jaw drops. 

“Daughter of Death, my lady,” he chants, as if possessed. He’s trembling. 

“Describe your death for me.”

As expected, Carson Gloverfield’s account of the circumstances around his death are rather fragmented. Connor can’t imagine that it’s something that he’d particularly like to look back on. Still, under Diane’s command, he delivers, right down to the color of the burst of light accompanying the explosion of energy that ripped through the village in the last moments of his life. 

“Green, you say?” clarifies Connor. “Like, neon bar sign green?” Carson nods. 

Definitely Hecate magic. “Well, you can’t be expected to know why the blast happened… Anything weird happen hours or days before?”

Carson’s wrinkle-lined mouth opens. He blinks rapidly a few minutes, then closes it. “I-I’m sorry, I’m well into my years, as you can see… I’m afraid I don’t remember anything much.”

Connor leans closer to the specter. “Any detail would be appreciated. New face around town, a suspicious quarrel? This looks like a very small town.”

Carson stubbornly shakes his head. “I’m telling you! I don’t remember anything! I’m a senile old man.”

Something shifts in Diane’s expression. Connor can’t point out what it is exactly, but in the next moment, she looks infinitely more dangerous when she says with a hard mouth, “You cannot lie in my presence.”

“He’s not lying,” whispers Connor. “My dad’s the god of thievery and trickery. I’d know.”

Diane exhales harshly. “Thank you for your time, Carson Gloverfield. Rest peacefully now.” She swipes her hand through him, and he fades into the darkness. 

“Maybe if we find someone younger, they’ll be able to tell us something useful,” Connor says sardonically. 

Diane looks down at Carson Gloverfield’s corpse—or what’s left of it. The blast, whatever the cause was, had been strong enough to strip away skin, fat, and muscle from the left side of his body. But from the big dent in his eye socket, Connor figures that he died first from head trauma, when flying debris must have rammed into his face. 

“He’s still waiting,” she murmurs. “No family to bury him, no survivors to give him proper rites.”

“We can’t put a drachma under his tongue.” Connor feels like a monster, but he’s only being practical. “If we do, we have to put a drachma under everyone’s tongue in this village. We don’t have enough to go around.”

She turns to him. Her eyes are black again. “May I borrow one of your daggers?”

He hands  _ Flinkayt  _ to her. She crouches down, and Connor looks away with a wince when she displaces the maggots with a perfunctory kick and takes his dagger to the dried, mottled flakes of skin.

Gods. If the people in this town had all suffered the same fate, then whatever caused the blast must have contained enough magic to preserve all the remains. At least, until the maggots and cockroaches and mushrooms came. 

He dares a glance at the corpse when Diane hands the dagger back to him, and he spots a theta carved into the cheek of the corpse. 

“It’s my father’s symbol,” she tells him. “Charon will see it and know that my father has given them authority to pass over.”

“Neat,” he says.  _ That’s kind of you _ , he doesn’t say.

They head on over to the next house, formerly inhabited by a single mother and her ten-year-old daughter. A terrible shadow overcomes Diane’s face, and Connor has to do all the talking for her there. 

Not that they had anything useful to share. It wasn’t anything that Carson Gloverfield hadn’t already told them. When it’s time to put them to rest, Diane drags them out of the shadows of their house and into their backyard, where the earth and the little animals will eat away at them quicker. 

They move onto another house after that, and yet another one after that. The hands on Connor’s watch wind their way around the face, and with each passing house, with each group of corpses, Connor forces numbness upon himself until his fingertips can feel only a fuzzy sensation. 

After a while, Diane’s eyes stop reverting back to their normal color. It’s unnerving, even more so, when her strides become more and more fatigued. Connor has to wait for her to catch up to his pace countless times by the time they round five blocks, and when it’s time yet again for Diane to brand the corpses—this time, those of a family of five—her hand has lost the strength needed to carve the circular shape of the theta. Her left hand shoots up to grip her opposite wrist, but to no avail; tremors ripple through her hand, and the gash on the corpse that’s meant to be an oblong takes on the shape of a scythe. 

_ Flinkayt  _ clatters to the ground. 

“Diane?” Connor asks, but she only grips onto the dagger and lifts it once more to flakes of skin. The brand comes out jagged at the theta’s curvature. “Diane!”

She ignores him and moves onto the next corpse. 

On the third body, Connor thinks he hears a small cough. 

He moves closer, shivers crawling up his spine at the smell. 

Her shoulders give a sharp jolt, and yep, that’s definitely a cough. A dry one, at that, and one that sounds very,  _ very  _ familiar to Connor—

She coughs yet again, and it cuts halfway to a croaking sound. Connor darts forward and twists her neck to the side, gathering up her hair in one smooth swoop before she—

An acidic smell accompanies a rather lengthy retch, and Connor averts his eyes from the mess she’s making. He focuses on gathering up the stubborn baby coils of her hair and tucking them into his hold as she pukes out everything she ate in the van.  _ What a waste of good halal food,  _ he silently mourns, before his thoughts get cut off by another wave of retches. 

Well, at least she didn’t vomit on his shoes. Or on the corpses for that matter. Fast thinking on her part. 

When she’s finished, he feels up the back of her nape. “You’re breaking out in cold sweat,” he observes. “That’s enough necromancy for tonight.”

“No,” she rasps. “Let me—Let me finish this. Please. At least this. It’s the least I can do.”

Connor worries at his bottom lip. Two more corpses. 

Diane stares at him. At his face?

“After this, no more,” he says with finality. “And don’t try to be stubborn about it. In the state you’re in, I could probably carry you, bridal style,” he taunts, hoping to embarrass her into compliance. 

She continues staring at him. He stops chewing his lip. “What? Want me to make good on my promise?”

“No shame in being bridal carried,” she says, then turns back to the corpses, all the while careful to avoid her puddle of puke. 

Connor feels himself blush, then he winces at her retort.  _ Right _ . She’d practically scooped him up back in the Hypnos Cabin like he was nothing more than a sack of feathers. 

Diane hands him back his dagger and rises from her crouch. Under the meager light, she’s gone from sheet white to grey. Even her lips have drained of all blood. 

“Diane!” is all he’s able to shout before his stupid questmate tries taking a few steps forward and promptly passes out into his arms. He staggers under her weight—gods, she packed  _ way  _ more muscle than her jacket-clad frame suggested. “Diane— _ fucking hell _ .”

He clears a space for her to lay down on and props up her feet on his lap. She’s cold all over, except for her hands, where all the blood in her body has flowed—probably from using her powers. He swears some more, feeling repeatedly for her fading pulse while he’s at it, and slips a menthol candy into her mouth. “Suck on it,” he orders. He unwraps another piece of candy and places it beneath her nose. 

Then he gets to work. He yanks off her jacket, boots, and fingerless gloves—who the hell even paraded around in biker attire in this weather, anyway?—and starts mercilessly prodding at her wrists and ankles, one hand on each pair of appendages. Her forearms, bloated and red, are pulsing scaldingly beneath his left hand, while her shins are much colder by comparison. He watches as cold sweat beads on the underside of her jawline, and he squeezes faster and harder. 

Just as his hands are starting to cramp, the severe redness in her arms recedes upwards into the sleeves of her shirt, and her legs begin to warm. He continues pushing the blood as far up as what’s decently allowed, then feels for her pulse. 

To his relief, it beats stronger with each wave, and none of the major arteries seem to have a stutter in their rhythms. He sighs and lets himself sit back, keeping Diane’s arms and legs above her heart with the help of his trusty lap. 

He’s alerted to her consciousness when tiny sounds of candy being crushed between teeth reaches his ears. Diane’s eyes have fluttered open, and they’re back to their flint-like state. With a quick swipe of her tongue, she catches the second menthol candy in her mouth and starts chomping on that as well. 

Connor doesn’t even  _ know  _ what to say. Everything was too sudden for him to process. 

Diane shifts her elbow to sit up. 

“Nope!” he snaps. “If you so much as attempt to get up before I allow you to, you absolute menace, I will ensure that you wake up in shaving cream for the rest of our quest! Do you understand?”

She can’t move her head, much less stare him down from her position. 

Connor huffs. Everything might indeed have been too sudden for him to process, but her bullheadedness… Connor figures that she’s not used to anyone questioning her—her stone-like face is concrete enough to withstand any suspicions that she might be scared, or furious, or feeling anything at all. He bets that she could be a complete bitch to someone’s face, and they’d never think she  _ was  _ actually bitching at them, all simply because she  _ looked that regal and so fucking sure of herself.  _

Well, he’s certainly not going to be fooled. 

“So,” he begins, “please give a good reason as to why you felt the need to put me through this ordeal. Poor old Connor Stoll has been victimized. He thinks he must’ve grown twenty new white hairs in the last few minutes.”

Silence hangs in the parched air around them.

“If you really want to get up that badly, roll onto your side for a few minutes,” he says. He’s seen Will Solace do this enough times at Camp to not memorize that particular monologue of his. “Then slowly sit up.  _ Slowly _ . Unless you want blood pooling in your lower extremities again.”

Obediently, she rolls over onto her side. He’s torn between doing something ridiculous (particularly patting her leg and saying something along the lines of, “Good girl!”—he blames the Apollo cabin’s mother hen habits) and taking another swipe at her, but then she says, “It’s because of my godly parentage.”

“Because of your dad?” Connor has never seen any demigod have such an extreme reaction to using their inherited powers, now that he thinks about it. 

“My father is the personification of Death. You could imagine why it would be hard for him to have children.”

“So… you’re one in a million?”

“One in four billion, actually,” she says, and he chokes. “My father has only managed to sire 24 children over the whole lifespan of the universe, including me, and not for his lack of trying. The last one was born during the height of the Bubonic Plague.”

“600 years ago. Oh lord.”

“My dead siblings and I share one thing in common: our very essence is constantly at war with itself. And when we lean in too much into our godly side…”

“It eats away at your mortal side,” he finishes, recalling her milky eyes. “Well, that puts a whole other meaning to ‘miracle baby.’”

“My mother is the daughter of she who keeps the gods youthful.”

_ Hebe _ . “Definitely boosted your dad’s baby-making chances, then.”

“You could say that.” With a grunt, she slowly sits up. He lifts her feet off his lap. “Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t thank me. I’m gonna cash that in later, believe me.” He shakes his head in exasperation. “You can’t just go around shocking people whenever you overexert yourself using your powers. Ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, and all that bullshit. You’re seriously going to leave me alone in this creepy-ass town?”

Is it just him, or did the bags under her eyes get darker? 

Her brow gives into the slightest furrow. He resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I had to feel for your pulse thrice before I found it.” No wonder she only relied on her blades during the fight with Lamia, in spite of the monster’s magical capabilities. “Let’s go back to the van. And when I say no more necromancy, I mean it.”

She nods, and he gently pulls the both of them to their feet. She blinks rapidly, her legs shifting uncertainly under her weight, so he crouches down a bit and slings her arm over his shoulders. 

“You’re lucky I’m such a seasoned drinker… You almost vomited on my shoes,” he rambles. “I’m usually the one watching my friends get shitfaced at parties. Holding their hair back, keeping expensive cars and clothes out of the way. Also, booking them taxis and bringing them home. I’ve had to change my friends’ clothes for them multiple times. I’m such a good friend, and apparently, ichor gives you better alcohol tolerance. Hey, do you think that applies to you? How much can you drink before you get all wobbly?”

“I don’t…” She clears her throat. “I don’t. Usually.”

“Aww, come on,” he wheedles. “Never gotten up to drunk shenanigans? What kind of life have you been living? Fuck quest etiquette, I’m taking you out drinking as soon as we figure out what to do in this town. And  _ no _ , don’t say we’re gonna waste time, I’ve already made up my mind.”

“I feel sorry for them,” she says quietly, and it’s so out of nowhere that Connor takes a minute or two to understand exactly what she’s talking about. 

“It’s not your fault,” he states with as much conviction as he can. “You didn’t want this to happen.”

Her face falls. 

“I should’ve… fought harder. To go with him. Maybe he wouldn’t have been alone. These people would be alive.”

Connor has no comforting sentiments for that.  _ You couldn’t have gone with him.  _ No, that wasn’t helpful.  _ They’re in a better place now.  _ Objectively speaking, Asphodel was a boring-as-fuck place to be.  _ That kid’s bound to attract trouble wherever he goes, anyway.  _ Most likely to become a match to light Diane’s fuse.

_ It’s my fault, not yours.  _ Too revealing. 

“We still don’t know exactly what caused all this,” he says instead. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. And besides, it’s not like your bullheaded attitude’s gonna let me leave before you figure out every single detail of what went down here.”

(Of course, that’s not counting the fact that he may be (intellectually!) invested enough to ride on this case, not unlike a dog jumping onto the bumper of a car and hanging on for dear life with only its teeth. Even when the car hits the highway and its speed picks up, and other cars come careening close enough that it could crush the dog.

Even when there’s always the possibility of a crash, or letting go by accident.)

Connor nearly wilts in relief when he sees the van in the down the block they arrived in. “Hallelujah. It’s bedtime, baby! What a day!”

“Bedtime?” Diane glares at him. “It’s barely past midnight.”

“Uh huh, and you need to get some rest for that blood pressure of yours. Listen, you need a fuckton of sleep to stabilize. Otherwise, the next time it drops, it’s gonna drop harder than I do when I hear a good song at the club.”

He yanks open the back of the van, and against her intentional deadweight, throws her onto the mattress laid out on the van floor in a burst of strength. Her wild mane of princess curls give a startled bounce when her back hits the soft cushions underneath, and she stares up at him with raw surprise. 

“Ha!” he blurts out into the strangely heavy air between them. “Guess I’m stronger than you thought.”

She continues staring at him. 

He quickly hops out of the van and turns around. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Won’t you?”

“Huh? I mean… No, I can take the first watch.”

“There are no living things around us. Nothing to watch out for,” she flatly says. 

“Just in case.” He pushes down her shoulder without even glancing backwards. 

She doesn’t protest much after that; Connor guesses that she truly is fatigued. 

And besides, he could use the quiet. 

He has lots of thinking to do. 

He takes a seat at the edge of the van and silently recounts all the events that have happened, all the information they have gathered, and starts to put together the pieces of a massive jigsaw puzzle. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a nightmare on elm street theme song.mp3]
> 
> nah, just kidding. keeseville ain't that scary. it's just... awfully quiet and devoid of life. 
> 
> a good chunk of this chapter was written while my mental state was spiralling because of this damn pandemic, and i feel like it shows lol. ok, not really because of the pandemic itself—more like the never-ending helicopter parenting covid has put me under :// fuck this quarantine honestly AHAHHAHA
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoyed connor being a sarcastic, confused, yet sharp liddol boi in this chapter :> and as always, would love to know what you guys think of connor and diane hehehehe <33
> 
> love you all, and stay safe in these strange times !


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Area Man a Feminist but Refuses to Listen to Area Woman," or: Connor refusing to admit he's lost is the least dumb thing he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning/s: slight violence at the end of the chapter

Diane is  _ not  _ a peaceful sleeper at night. Connor reflects on all the romance novels he has read in the past featuring the main character waxing poetic about how their love interest (usually the burly, brooding type) looks so much younger and relaxed when sleeping, and he realizes,  _ Wow, what bullshit.  _

It’s a testament to the potency of Hebe’s godly power if Diane sleeps every night like she’s sleeping right now and still somehow maintains the face of a 22-year-old. Her eyebrows are scrunched tightly together, her eyeballs are constantly rolling in all directions, and pinched lines appear around her mouth and her eyes. If anything, this is probably the most expressive she has been so far. 

Not that he’s deliberately watching her sleep. Yuck. He wasn’t Edward Cullen, and Diane was definitely no Bella Swan. He starts out the night breaking open the paint can and the paint rollers and robotically kneading white onto the “Delphi Strawberry Service” logo printed on the side. When he’s done, he takes a seat on the edge of the open trunk as he waits for the first layer of paint to dry. 

It’s only then that he hears the tiny sounds Diane is unconsciously making. He shines his flashlight over her and thinks at first,  _ Demigod nightmares _ . But she shows no signs of distress or fear—no beads of sweat, no whimpering, no shivering. She’s definitely having dreams, though, going off from the occasional mumble of “I’m here.” She repeats the sentence over and over again until Connor gets sick of saying, “Yes, unfortunately,” and crawls out of the trunk. He takes off his shirt before it can become unusable and soaked with sweat and practices some monster-fighting moves against imaginary foes. 

The burn in his lungs helps him forget for a good while about the sad hitches in Diane’s voice whenever she says, “I’m here,” and lets him concentrate instead on thinking. 

When his extensive imagination has run out of imaginary action sequences for him to enact, he distracts himself a little longer by painting a second time. His soundtrack diversifies; Diane’s “I’m here’s” become interspersed with “no” and “please,” each new word introducing another level of desperation into her tone. Her voice reaches its loudest when, just as he’s about to put away the paint roller, she groans, “Mom.”

He sighs.  _ You can take the co-counselor out of the cabin, but not the cabin out of the co-counselor _ . 

* * *

“Why’re you awake, Witch Boy?”

All Connor got from Alabaster was a glare and, “Don’t call me that.”

“You stepped on my hair while sneaking out. I’m just getting even.”

“Not all of us have Tinkerbell’s step.”

“I’m Tinkerbell?” Connor snickered. “Here, have some pixie dust.”

Before Alabaster could react, Connor blew some of Luke’s shaving powder into Alabaster’s face. Ever since he and Travis made the lava climbing wall spew shaving cream instead of actual lava (“See, now you have a child-friendly climbing wall!” they had brightly said to Mr. D’s face.), the substance had been banned from Camp grounds. The older demigods were forced to make do with shaving powder, which was less destructive—that is, until Stoll creativity came up with something even more hellish to clean up. 

For now, though, this was enough. Petty victims begot petty pranks. When Alabaster was done coughing and scrubbing the residue from his eyes, Connor tossed him a towel and plopped down beside him on the porch. Eyeing the small notebook in the other boy’s bony hands, he said, “Man, you are obsessed. Your claiming was, what, three weeks ago? How many spells have you already come up with?”

“ _ Incantare: Abolesco _ .” Alabaster held his hands over his eyes. Connor leaned away warily. 

Nothing happened. 

“ _ Incantare: Abolesco _ ,” he tried again, but to no effect once more. Connor tapped his lip thoughtfully. 

“Try saying ‘ _ effluo _ ’ instead of ‘ _ abolesco _ ,’” he suggested. Alabaster gave him an ugly side-eye. 

“Stay out of my business, Stoll. I wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t thrown that damn—” He gave a frustrated growl when his eyes started to water again from irritation. “Damn it all to Hades!  _ Incantare: Effluo _ !”

Particles began to lift from the teary surface of his eyes and from all over his face. Connor spotted a few floating out from under Alabaster’s shirt, too. The tiny specks of powder gathered in a tiny clump and dropped to the ground, disappearing through the cracks between the wooden planks. 

Alabaster’s eyes were still red when he glared at Connor. “I’d kill you on the spot, but I’d be wasting my energy doing it to a lowlife like you.”

“Yeah, whatever, I get it. A humble prankster like me is unworthy of your magic, ,” he said nonchalantly. “But I bet if I looked inside your notebook, your Latin would be all messed up. Personally, conjugating the verbs and the homonyms are the biggest pains in the ass when learning that language.”

“How—How—?” Alabaster looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. 

Connor shrugged. “‘ _ Ablesco’  _ and  _ ‘effluo’  _ both mean to vanish, but  _ ‘ablesco’  _ works in the context of dying and perishing.  _ ‘Effluo’  _ was better for the powder, since you were trying to get it to ‘flow out’ of your eyes. Among other areas.” He shrugged again—it seemed to be the only suitable gesture. “Languages come easy to me as a Hermes kid.”

“You’re showing off,” Alabaster said bitterly. 

He smiled winningly at Alabaster. “So you admit that it’s something to be amazed at?” No response. He whooped. “I’ve managed to impress the Chosen One? Definitely worth losing my sleep over! Damn!”   
  


“Quiet! You’re basically asking to get eaten by the harpies!” Alabaster hissed. 

“And you’re waking everyone in Camp Half-Blood up, you little jerks,” came Luke’s raspy voice. Connor and Alabaster both whirled around with guilty looks on their faces. “It’s four in the damn morning. Get back inside, breakfast is in a couple of hours, and I’d rather see you gobbling down cereal than  _ be  _ the harpies’ cereal.”

Even in the scant light, Connor could see color crawling up Alabaster’s neck at the sight of Luke Castellan. 

He gave Luke a shit-eating grin and nudged Alabaster. “Race ya!” He bolted into the cabin and dove over several sleeping campers. 

“That asshole—Luke, he took my bed!”

“Connor,” Luke said tiredly. Connor gave a loud snore. “Alabaster, you can just take his spot.”

“B—But—he sleeps—”

“If you wanna fight him for space in that tiny spot of yours, thanks for leaving the space beside mine free. I’m going to sleep like a king either way.”

A grumble, and Alabaster shuffling his feet. “Fine,” he groused, marching over and proudly claiming Connor’s spot. Luke keeled over beside Alabaster, and he was out in a second.

Over Travis’s body, Connor raised his head, just enough so that his eyes were seen, and gave Alabaster a wink. He received a middle finger in return. 

_ Maybe you’ll sleep better when Mr. Congeniality is up for the cuddling,  _ he inwardly thought.

“Connor?”

He looked down at his brother in surprise. “You’re awake?”

Travis gave Connor a hard knock on the forehead. He bit back a scream. “Go the fuck to sleep. Mess with Harry Potter tomorrow.”

* * *

Connor wakes up to the feeling of blood circulating through his legs again. 

He pries one eye open, wincing at the sunlight streaming into the back of the van, before daring to meet the eyes of one very placid but confused Diane Stone. 

“You’re a noisy sleeper,” he tells her. “The only peace and quiet I could get was when I was holding you in some way. At some point, I decided, ‘Fuck it,’ and replaced the pillow with my lap. Happy? Oh, by the way, I stole that from the Hypnos Cabin, so you’re welcome. Now, don’t fall in love with me.”

The corner of her lip curls, and she looks away. “You should’ve woken me up.”

“I wasn’t planning to sleep anyway. That was an accident. But hey, it was a productive night for me! I painted the side of the van so we can blend in with the mortals—but honestly, it looks like a kidnapping vehicle—I brushed up on my dueling, and I did some thinking! Dangerous pastime, not recommended.”

“I see. Me too.”

“What? Your shitty sleep was productive?” he jokes. 

“Alabaster got our message.”

_ That  _ shocks him fully awake. Coffee who? “What’d he say? Where is he?”

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t trust us. Or…”

Something in him deflates. “He doesn’t trust me,” he guesses. “That’s why you went ahead with replying to him without me.”

She nods. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “Nah. If I were him, I wouldn’t trust me either. Anyway, what happened?”

“I conveyed to him the situation, if he doesn’t already know. I also told him to stay where he currently was, since the gods haven’t found wherever he’s been hiding all these years. Movement now would only attract their attention.”

“Right. Anything from Percy and Annabeth? Or any of the captured kids?” She shakes her head. “Well. I’ve figured out how we can track Alabaster.”

He has her full attention immediately. “If Alabaster ever talked shop with you, you’d know this—magic can’t make something from nothing, and vice versa. And well, I got to thinking last night: the big green explosion everyone was talking about should’ve left  _ something _ . Like, a magical signature, or some weird energy. But no, moss is growing on everything there, and maggots are gobbling up the corpses, so everything’s pretty much normal. So that means—”

“There’s a certain part in this village where the magic is all concentrated,” she finishes for him. “To maintain the balance.”

He nods. “And what do you bet that Alabaster left behind a trail leading to where he went next? It would explain why all the ghosts you talked to have no recollection whatsoever of their deaths. Alabaster’s mother would want to protect her precious champion.”

“What if the trail goes cold?”

Connor clicks his tongue and produces a paper cup for her. “Well, I’m not Annabeth, who’s basically the closest person to omniscience since Leonardo da Vinci. I’m more of an ‘improvise-and-figure-it-out-later’ guy. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Let's just start the day. Mouthwash?”

She takes it from him and downs it without a second thought.

Connor watches her. 

Suddenly, her eyes glass over with tears, and she makes an aborted choking noise. Like a spider, she clambers over to the edge of the trunk and spits. Not that he can hear her; Connor’s busy cackling his ass off like a hyena. He shakes a travel-sized bottle of Tabasco in her line of sight. 

“You carry around Tabasco?!” she gasps out. “In your pocket?!”

“It makes pranking on the road so much easier!” he laughs. “Everyone should carry around Tabasco in their pockets! Gods, this is the most emotion I’ve seen on your face!”

Speaking of her face… “Also, you should—” Connor awkwardly gestures to her face— “wash that off while we’re miles away from civilization.”

She blinks. And lifts a hand to her face—only to see it come away smudged with red ink. 

A snort breaks out of him. “Sorry, I—I couldn’t control myself,” he snickers. “If it’s any consolation, you are the prettiest clown I’ve ever made up.”

A muscle under her eye twitches. 

* * *

Connor isn’t sure if he’s disappointed or relieved that Diane shows no further reaction as they clean themselves up for the day. 

Still, as much as he lives to inspire lightheartedness in other people, he knows when he’s hit the limit. Diane has relocated the harness of her sheaths from over her shoulders to around her waist, where her hand now pointedly lays on everytime he so much as gets a mischievous thought. He’s not sure what gives him away, but he suspects she’s watching his face more than strictly necessary for questing purposes. 

Can’t bring out humor in other people if you’re dead, he supposes. But, as Diane is the daughter of Thanatos, she might be an exception to this rule. He tells her this much, and she only blinks and says flatly, “How boring.”

He’s offended. He skips a few steps ahead of her to block the way. “ _ Boring _ ?” he says in disbelief. “Me, Connor Stoll, boring?! Wow, the projection was real. What do you even do for fun?”

She says nothing, just attempts to sidestep him, and the only thing that saves him from falling on his ass like a fool is his Hermes-given agility. To his right, they walk past a house that must’ve been inhabited by a plant-lover; the years were kind enough to the plants that they now  _ are  _ the house, vines occupying every square centimeter there was on the cement facade. 

“Come on, you relic. Hobbies? Pastimes? I’d ask about your love life, but we both know how that song plays out. Unless…” He peers at her. “Nah, you don’t seem the type to move on. You got that widow look going on here, even though we’re barely out of our teens.”

They continue striding down the streets of Keeseville—or rather Diane continues striding, purposefully and all that, while Connor puts some hop and skip in his backwards steps. His ADHD is getting to him with all these dead houses and dead bodies and dead air. He was the blot in the poetic portrait of Death’s daughter, who was comfortable like this ghost town was her domain. Diane seemed right at home with all the silence—not that it was surprising. 

All of a sudden, he wonders what Diane and Alabaster—the two of them together—must have been like with each other. 

Frankly, he can’t imagine it. From what he remembers, Alabaster was so surly he picked a fight with nearly everyone who so much as breathed in his direction. Maybe Diane’s near-constant silence was the reason they got along in the first place, but how did one develop a freaking  _ relationship  _ from that? Let alone feelings that apparently endured for several years, even when they were no longer together?

The next establishment they pass must have been a former cafe; even until now, the tempered glass with the cafe’s logo—something that started with a “B,” or was it a “P”—remained free from any creepers except for the layers of dust that settled on its surface. If Connor squinted harder, he might have been able to envision the cafe as it was before its destruction from the toppled over chairs and chunks of half-tables. 

Diane stops walking, head straining towards the cafe. 

He follows her gaze. “What is it?”

She slowly cocks her head to the right, gaze unflinching and challenging. “Lamia was here.”

Now that she mentions Lamia, Connor feels the magic buzzing in the air. Lamia’s magic is bitter and heavy, tainted with such hatred that the blood in his veins seem to freeze at Connor’s very acknowledgement of her power. In an unsaid agreement, the two of them simultaneously make their way towards the destroyed cafe. 

“This wasn’t destroyed by the explosion,” he realizes as they get closer. “There was a fire here.” He points at the black crusts along the edges of the bohemian-style rattan chairs and their floral cushions. 

Diane steps over the shattered glass window and rounds what was once an acrylic bar counter. Connor peers over the counter and winces at the scorched bones of the unfortunate barista. 

“Lamia caused the fire,” he says to no one in particular. “But why? Maybe Alabaster was hiding here? But no, Alabaster clearly escaped, so logically, Lamia should’ve followed him, and the magic should leave a trail… So why is it only here?”

Diane drops to her knees at the skeleton’s side. 

“No!” Connor nearly shouts. “I said no more necromancy! Not so soon after last night!”

“How am I supposed to talk to him?” She lays a hand on the skeleton. “His name was… Burly Black?”

“Wow, his parents must’ve really hated him,” Connor mumbles. “And besides, I’ve got a theory.” 

Obviously, Lamia hadn’t set fire to this place in order to capture Alabaster—not here, anyway. Alabaster definitely would’ve fought back, and his magic would have left a trace. So if it hadn’t been Alabaster Lamia had been trying to endanger—

“—it must have been Dr. Claymore,” he reasons to Diane. She mulls over his theory, looking for any holes, but Connor knows he’s pretty much covered all bases. “As far as we guessed, Alabaster went looking for Dr. Claymore because he needed to kill Lamia once and for all, right? Makes sense that Lamia would try to kill Dr. Claymore, too.”

“We must be close.” Diane’s eyes are bright with hope. “Burly Black was the only one who died here. Dr. Claymore left this place alive.”

He nods. “Alabaster wasn’t here, and no mortal could survive that long against Lamia without having some sort of assistance. So the good doctor probably went to Witch Boy.”

She gives him a flat look. 

“Hey, this ain’t the Salem Witch Trials. Don’t go berserk on me.”

They leave the burnt-down cafe. Beyond the perimeter of the property, however, the buzz of Lamia’s magic fades away. They have no Hecate kid or expert on magic with them, so Connor has no choice but to lead blindly through the streets.

Diane tries to convince him to let her question Burly Black, but Connor shoots down the suggestion. He remembers Nico after the Giant War, confined (however much by force) by Will Solace to the infirmary for three days. Most people remember it as the start of an adorable relationship, but Connor can never forget the way Nico nearly became a literal shadow. If Diane’s blood being unable to circulate throughout her body was merely a mild reaction, he didn’t want to see what happened when it got worse. “And besides,” he tells her, “Keeseville isn’t that big, and I have an impeccable sense of direction. There’s only so many times we can get lost here before we eventually come up with something.”

Except for the fact that several hours later, when the noon sun has long passed over their heads and the summer air has loosened its stifling hold on their necks (how and why Diane keeps her leather jacket on, Connor has no idea), they still haven’t so much as gotten an inkling of any magic. At all. 

Connor’s  _ never  _ gotten lost before. Even when his mom took him and Travis to Disneyland at the tender age of five and he salivated over the turkey legs on Main Street long enough to be separated from the both of them, he played it chill. He took his sweet time scamming the vendor, paying for one leg but secretly snatching two, snuck a single peek at a fellow customer’s map, and ambled into the gift shop near the exit, where he found his brother doing some shoplifting, as expected. Even when a monster (a Laistrygonian disguised as a nice security guard) started tailing the two of them, they dragged it into the Mad Tea Party ride and spun the teacup they were in so quickly and so violently that it threw up once during the ride and thrice after, so they had to meet their mother in the customer service booth smelling like monster puke. 

But he has  _ never  _ gotten lost. 

“We’re lost,” Diane says, and wasn’t that a first, Diane saying something without being prompted! Connor fists his hair in his hands and seethes. 

“No, we’re not!” he snarls. “I don’t get lost! I’ve never—NEVER—gotten lost in my life, and I’m not going to start now!”

Diane points at the plant-lover’s house. “Six times,” is all she says. 

“Eight times,” he corrects her, then he realizes she’s caught him by the neck, hook, line, and sinker. “Ugh! Well, what do you think we should do?!”

“Let me question Burly Black.”

He feels so out of his element here. He closes his eyes and expels a frustrated breath. He knows nearly nothing about magic, nearly nothing about necromancy, nearly nothing that could help them right now. The best he can offer right now is his impeccable sense of navigation, and even that’s being taken away by—

His eyes fly open. 

“No.”

“No? It is our only option—”

“No.” He runs a hand through his hair and gives the plant-lover’s house a side-eye. “We’re working under the assumption that Hecate covered up Alabaster’s tracks by manipulating the townspeople’s memories. So, why wouldn’t she cover up his magic, too?”

He waves his hand towards the innocent row of establishments down the block. There are around fifteen or so lots, before it separates into two other roads at a fork. “Do you think we could see past the Mist if we’re under it?”

It takes Diane a few seconds to realize what he’s talking about. With more urgency than ever, she grabs ahold of his hand and pulls the Mist over them. 

The sky over them wavers, and the fork in the road splits into three. 

“There!” But Connor doesn’t need to say anything; he swears his shoulder is nearly pulled out of its socket when Diane takes off running, hauling him by the hand. With the both of them being able to keep pace with each other, they clear the block in a matter of seconds. Connor takes his turn to yank Diane into another road that the Mist had previously covered, and into multiple ones after that. 

The soles of his feet and his lungs are burning when Connor skids to a stop at a certain road. Diane’s jaw drops. 

“Alabaster,” the both of them gasp, and Connor grits his teeth. Alabaster’s magic is so powerful the weight of it settles in his gut. The time passed after whatever happened here in Keeseville did little to diminish the saturation of Alabaster’s presence; a veritable flood of flashbacks suddenly invades Connor’s mind, and he winces against them. 

“It’s not real,” he mumbles to himself. Beside him, Diane’s eyes have filled with tears. 

_ Her first hint of Alabaster. After so many years.  _ Connor swallows down the bile threatening to climb up his throat.  _ And mine too.  _

_ This is really happening.  _

“See what I mean?” he tries to joke. “Widow look, except your husband isn’t really dead.”

“He’s not my husband,” she chokes out, but she turns her head away to swipe at her tears before Connor can see them fall. Her trembling hand clenches around his. 

Connor can’t find it in himself to take the first step into the cul-de-sac, so Diane does it for the both of them. 

If the rest of Keeseville’s buildings still had some remains to be remembered by—a foundation, crumbling walls, skeletons, and creeping plants—this cul-de-sac was reduced to nothing but dust. Only the height difference between the sidewalk and the road survived as an indication of what was once a street. There wasn’t even a single patch of grass to be found among the dry brown crumbs of earth lining the ground. 

The further down the street they walk, the heavier the magic gets. Connor’s skin prickles—Alabaster’s presence fades with every step he takes, intermingling with the instinctive fear of Lamia’s magic he felt earlier. But there’s something else, too, and the most frightening thing about it is that it’s beyond words. Too ancient, too broad to put into words. 

It feels like trying to explain what ichor is made of. 

He only realizes that he’s shaking when Diane grips his hand so tightly his bones ache. He hadn’t even realized that neither of them had let go. 

He recalls the sleeping spell that was put over Manhattan in the hours before Camp Half-Blood closed ranks to defend Olympus. It’s the same feeling—too powerful, too unfathomable to even consider fighting. 

“Alabaster’s mother was here,” Connor says in a low tone. He doesn’t dare speak her name. 

At the end of the cul-de-sac, the land makes an abrupt drop into the Hudson River. Connor’s eyes narrow. Diane lets go of his hand to approach the tip of the limestone cliff and looks downwards. He ignores the emptiness in the shape of her hand to follow her. 

The river bank was so shallow that the sand floor was visible from their vantage point, and the drop was high enough that impact would leave  _ at least  _ a broken leg. 

“Dr. Claymore died here,” Diane says. She frowns. “Physically speaking.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a death here… But I cannot sense his presence from the Underworld the way I did with the others.”

Connor thinks back on the story of Piper bringing Jason back from the Underworld when he accidentally saw Hera’s true form. “Alabaster’s mother must have brought Dr. Claymore back through the Doors of Death. When your dad was… you know.”

Diane looks around them. “No wonder the rest of the town has been reduced to rubble. Even with the Doors of Death open, pulling a lifeform out of the Underworld’s realm  _ and  _ putting it back into the mortal plane expends lots of energy. Dr. Claymore must have performed some extraordinary act to produce such energy for the magic to take place.”

“Let alone give Alabaster’s mom a reason to break laws of life and death,” Connor adds. “He probably died saving Alabaster from Lamia, so he was given another life.”

“Alabaster should have cast that spell,” Diane mumbles under her breath. “Should have killed Lamia for once and for all.”

“With how many siblings he lost in Manhattan, I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother chose to save him and separate them instead.”

Diane looks at him in surprise. He gives her a cocky grin. “What can I say, I’m a certified genius. You’re welcome!”

“My thanks are in order,” she says dryly. “Now, certified genius, where to next?”

Connor moves his foot, revealing a piece of black fabric unfortunate enough to get wedged in a shallow ridge on the cliff. He bends down to pick it up and brings it close to his face. It looks like standard black nylon, about the size of a tag on a clothing article—nothing special about it.

So he hands it over to Diane. “Your turn for ideas.”

She takes it delicately from him, like he’s handing her a china plate instead of a piece of cloth. But judging from her expression, it might as well be that precious. “Alabaster used to wear bulletproof vests in battle. He’d draw his runes on them. This is fabric from the outermost layer.”

“Great! Now if we only had a bloodhound.”

Something sly crosses her face, and it amuses Connor a little. Perhaps he’s rubbing off on her. She looks like she could use some laughter in her, anyway. “Better. Time to visit a friend.”   
  


He gasps in delight. “Are we going to pay a visit to Death Breath? His school year’s over as far as I know.”

He can tell she’s in a good mood from their recent development; she plays along with a small smile on her face. “I’m sorry if I don’t have the guts to call the son of my father’s master ‘Death Breath.’”

“I’m going to ignore the fact that you just did, for your sake.” She turns away quickly. “Hey! I saw you smirk! I’m not blind!”

“Let’s go back.” She starts walking. Connor whines and slings his arm over her shoulders. 

“Come on, you look much better happy.”

“I am.” Her face has returned to its blank state, but Connor can see the humorous slant of her half-moon eyes, the held tension at the corners of her lips.

“You  _ are  _ the prettiest clown I’ve ever made up. Even if I only had Sharpie at my disposal.”

He waits for a reaction, but gets none. He pouts. “Does Thanatos being your father also give you the ability to control your blushing?”

The combined weight of magic from Hecate, Alabaster, and Lamia eventually lift off their backs as they make their way back to the van. “I can’t believe we wasted gods know how many hours being stupid.”

Diane pulls the Mist off them. “I should have sensed the Mist earlier, but she is powerful. Her hold on the Mist extends beyond my father’s.”

“So your dad’s use of the Mist is limited?”

She nods. “The primary function of the Mist is to shield the world of the gods from mortal eyes. My father uses it to cloak himself from everyone, even the gods. Too many people would escape Death if they saw him coming. The Mist is familiar with him, as well as those who carry his blood.”

“Well, it’s only you who currently does,” Connor says. “But it’s a really neat trick against monsters, you know? If you can conceal everything about you, even your scent…”

“It takes a great deal of concentration,” says Diane, “and you cannot do it indefinitely. If you exist under the Mist, you cannot affect the real world, and vice versa.”

“So when I picked up the bulletproof vest cloth a while ago…”

“I had to unmask you, yes.”

Connor stops in his tracks. A foreboding feeling rises in his chest. 

“Is it possible for you not to sense lifeforms?” he asks. 

Diane raises an eyebrow but shakes her head. 

He relaxes slightly, resuming their walk, but the foreboding feeling refuses to dissipate. His fingers reach for  _ Kavene  _ and  _ Flinkayt,  _ twirling them relentlessly in their lockpick forms. 

“I don’t feel good about this,” Connor says out of nowhere. “Let’s just hurry.”

They pick up their pace, and from what Connor can tell, they’re about eleven blocks away from the van. Every step they take, every minute that peacefully ticks by, the more the unease in his chest strengthens. 

They’re about to round the corner leading to the fifth to the last block (Connor can’t stop counting) when he hears an audible gasp leaving Diane’s mouth. Before his brain can register it, Diane yanks him by the hand for the second time today and runs at full speed. 

“Something’s coming!” Diane yells. The wind is whipping past Connor’s ears with how fast she’s running. “We have to leave!”

“What is it?!”

“I don’t know! It’s—It’s—”

Connor’s foot hits something, and the world goes blurry when he hits the ground. Diane’s boots skid against concrete. “Connor! Get up! Get up, it’s—”

He sits up to see a polecat, of all things, staring at him. 

A polecat?

“Connor! Get up!”

“It’s a polecat!” 

Diane hauls him up by his armpits. “That’s no polecat! That’s—”

She actually almost manages to get him to stand, but she freezes then drops him. His butt hits the ground hard, and the polecat blinks innocently at his yell of pain. 

“The Dark Lady—her  _ empousai _ —” 

“ _ Empousai?! _ ” Connor scrambles to his feet. “Well, why didn’t you say anything earlier?!”

What little color there was in Diane’s face has drained away. “They appeared out of nowhere just now.”’

Connor’s head whips back to the polecat. It blinks its big, dark eyes up at him. “That thing is Hecate’s sidekick, isn’t it. How close are they?”

“At the town entrance.”

Connor blanches. There’s no way they’ll make it back to the van before Hecate and her minions reach it. They’ll have to fight their way through.

The polecat turns and lopes away from them. He takes out  _ Flinkayt  _ and  _ Kavene,  _ relishing in the familiar sensation of the Celestial Bronze of its lockpick form shifting into the leather hilt of his and Travis’ daggers. 

“How many are there?”

“I can’t count them all.”

Connor whirls to Diane. “What?! Wait, what are you doing? More specifically,  _ why aren’t you doing anything?! _ ”

She faces him with equal vehemence. “We have trespassed on a property under Lady Hecate’s protection. We were found out. We have to surrender, unless you want to be killed.”

It’s at that moment Connor notices that her shoulders have slumped into a resigned slouch. She hasn’t even reached for her  _ kopis _ . “Wait, you want us to just give up?! What if she kills us either way?!”

“We harbor no ill intentions towards Alabaster, she will let us go—”

“Because we absolutely totally haven’t obtained a crucial lead as to where he is!” he yells, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 

“If we oppose Lady Hecate, we will never find Alabaster,” she breathes. Her eyes are steely. “She will ensure it.”

Connor has nothing to say to that. She’s right, but their lives are still in danger!

“Connor, do you trust me?”

He hears the  _ empousai _ ’s footsteps now. They thunder on the pavement unevenly, alternating between the footsteps of their donkey legs and the harsh metal clanking of their prosthetic legs. 

He feels, too, the advent of Hecate—her power, her presence, her calm rage. All at once, Connor’s sixteen again, leading his unit, half of Cabin Eleven, where he was the oldest but still far too young to be fighting in a war that the immortals had brought upon themselves, a war wherein a child as young as five or six had been sent out to the frontlines like pigs in a slaughterhouse, and he’s standing on the mouth of Manhattan Bridge. On the other side, the silhouettes of the opposing army advance towards them, and he hears one of his cabinmates utter a sigh of relief into the still quiet. There are no hulking shadows of hellhounds, no unnatural curves of  _ dracanae _ , no dog-shaped heads of telkhines. No monsters. 

But Connor knows better. They got the worst unit. 

Because the moment their leader sets foot on the opposite end, the horizon howls with the Greek-fire-green lighting up the magic-laden air. 

Connor can’t so much as whimper in fear. He stands front and center, smile lopsided and hair unruffled.

He can’t be afraid. So he isn’t, and he thinks instead that this is gonna be another fun gamble. Adrenaline pumps through him as he takes off his helmet. 

It’s not any different from playing poker, or even dreidel or mahjong. Everything in life is a gamble if you make it one. You win some, you lose some. 

_ Everything in life is a gamble.  _

He rips apart the face of the first empousa that dares come near him. 

“CONNOR?!” Diane shouts in alarm. The  _ empousai  _ crowd and circle around her, giving her a wide berth. He can just barely feel the aura of death rolling off her in waves through his adrenaline-fueled haze. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

He doesn’t answer her. His legs work in a blur as they take him forwards and sideways and backwards, and the concrete smokes under his feet. The soles of his shoes are starting to feel a little burnt. He meets  _ empousa  _ after  _ empousa  _ with the business end of his two daggers, using one to stab the gut of one while slashing open the throat of another, then switch, rinse, repeat.

The gunk of golden monster dust piles up over his shirt. Somewhere around him, Diane screams, “CONNOR, STOP!”

He swipes his daggers in a long arc, pushing through masses of skin and muscle. The  _ empousai’s _ screeching rings in his ears. 

Eventually, a Celestial Bronze leg flies upwards and makes contact with one of his wrists. Nerves lighting up in pain, he unceremoniously drops his dagger and instead reaches for the monster’s hair. She has exactly a second to scream before he knees her to the ground, snaps her neck, and stabs her for good measure. 

The  _ empousai  _ are endless, relentless, countless. They fill his vision; no matter where he looks, there’s another one waiting to be killed. His limbs are working faster than his eyes can see, and he can’t register anything aside from the instinct to  _ live, live, live _ . His breath catches in his chest as he sinks his dagger into an approaching  _ empousa _ ’s eye then stabs that same blade into one more sneaking up from behind. 

_ Kavene, Kavene, where’s Kavene, I can’t lose Travis’ dagger _ . He looks around wildly, mind straining to keep his eyes wide open against every  _ empousa  _ that he turns into dust.  _ Where is it?! _

He looks over his shoulder. 

“Hello, darling,” an  _ empousa  _ laughs into his face, then her claws wrap around his throat—

A wave of black decapitates her, and Connor has no time to thank Diane for saving his life yet again before she turns to systematically dismember several  _ empousai  _ around them.  _ Flinkayt  _ finds itself in the gut of the umpteenth  _ empousa _ . 

“Connor, I’m begging you, stop this right now!” Diane pleads. “If we are to find Alabaster, we need Lady Hecate’s help!”

His mind won’t slow down. Her words get all minced up in the food processor of his senses. _ Kill one monster in front, check for your back, slash out at the sides.  _

The  _ empousai  _ are not big by any means, but what they lack in intelligence and power, they make up for in numbers. Even with his stamina, trained for endurance fighting, has begun to give out on him. With every stab, his arms feel more and more like jelly. 

They’re not gonna win. His back hits Diane’s, and she sends out another threatening wave of her deathly aura. 

That snaps him out of his adrenaline rush. Connor feels like he’s going to throw up.

Diane can’t keep up at bay using their fear for long. They’re bound to overcome it. Connor looks up through the sweat dripping onto his eyelashes, and the  _ empousai  _ look as many as they had been when they arrived.

And they’re unnaturally quiet. Aside from the instinctive hissing, they hurl no hateful words, no threats from their mistress. They just watch Connor and Diane catch their breath from afar. 

“I’m sorry,” he gurgles.  _ I couldn’t trust you. You don’t know what they can do.  _

She pretends not to hear him. “We come in peace,” she calls out to the  _ empousai.  _

Silence. 

“We wish the Dark Lady’s son no ill will, so please—” Diane drops her swords and kneels. 

Before Connor can do anything, the  _ empousai  _ descend on them. Behind him, Diane cries out in pain. He tries to turn around to see what they’re doing to her, but his limbs are promptly grabbed and his legs are kicked out from underneath him. Multiple bodies swarm on top of him, forcing his torso to bow beneath their weights.

“I will be the judge of that, daughter of Thanatos,” a cool voice sweeps through the air. “As for the son of Hermes… I’m not so sure if you can speak for him.”

Connor feels so helpless. He can barely breathe like this, with his forehead being ground against the rough pavement, but the first thing that escapes him is a laugh. 

“I see the situation is not dire enough, if you can still laugh,” the Dark Lady says, voice booming down all around them. “Take them!”

Connor can’t help it. He laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs, laughs at his situation, and laughs at the irony of it all, and then he laughs at himself for good measure until an  _ empousa  _ kicks the back of his head with her metal leg to knock him out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was. a monstrous chapter to write. gods help me. beyond the plot developments and the action scene, connor's emotions were the hardest to write :// he can't tell if he wants to have fun or have someone (alabaster lol jk) die of fun. 
> 
> aaaaaaaand enter hecate! one of, if not the most, badass of the gods! she has gone mama bear over covering up alabaster's tracks from son of magic! she's preventing people from finding her precious champion, but diane and connor genuinely have good intentions. so... hopefully nothing to worry about??
> 
> i truly missed travis in this chapter, so i tried to write him in as much as i could. and yes, connor was that annoyingly bouncy kid who played pranks but shared his snacks with alabaster. 
> 
> diane really swung from exasperated to happy in this chapter. *caresses my baby* why did you have to be a morosexual...
> 
> as always, would love to hear your thoughts! 
> 
> wishing you all well during this pandemic! stay at home and wash your hands <3 and most importantly, take care of your mental health!!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor takes a leaf out of Percy's book and nearly gets himself vaporized. Diane saves his ass (yet again) and lands them a quest. And a new pet.

“Magic…” Alabaster looked like a god with the moon shining over his head. An emaciated god, but a god nonetheless. Connor gaped up at him. “Magic draws its power from intentions.”

Connor tried to laugh, but the sound that escaped him was a half-sob, congested by the blood dripping from the roof of his mouth into his throat. “So you do really want to kill me that badly? Huh, Witch Boy?”

“You proposed this duel, Connor Stoll.” His voice was soft, and Connor really wished it didn’t speak such deadly incantations. “Time to lie in the bed you’ve made for yourself.”

* * *

The moment Connor opens his eyes, he really wishes he hadn’t. Because the first thing he sees is eyes as green as Greek fire, and he _ knows _that she knows what he was dreaming of. 

“Careful now, Connor Stoll,” the goddess of magic says, her voice crawling over his skin like a viper. “Wouldn’t want to hurt your companion here.”

They’re in an abandoned church. Behind Hecate is an ornate altar, its Celestial Bronze inlaid with emeralds the color of her eyes and rubies as deep as blood. Directly above them, the dying sunlight streams in through the small, stained glass window carved in Hecate’s symbol, two crossed torches. 

Connor is kneeling on the ground, separated from Hecate’s feet by three granite steps rising up to the altar. He dares a glimpse over his shoulder, only to see Diane in a similar kneeling position—except her head hangs limply in slumber. Her hands are chained with what looks like shackles made of Stygian Iron to the side of a pew.

His first instinct is to move towards her, but he has the sense to stop once he feels the thick ropes binding him all the way from his neck to his thighs. 

“I think one of your _ empousai _ has taken a fancy to me, milady,” he tells Hecate. “They took the time to study bondage patterns and apply it onto me.”

“My servants are skilled in the art of seduction,” Hecate says mildly. “When not in the business of devouring young men, they are rather skillful in avoiding the provocation of distaste in their targets.”

If Hecate’s trying to embarrass him, she’s failing. Connor has long shed any remaining thickness his face could hold. He grins at her. “Well then, I sure do hope that I was a good rope bunny for them. The ties feel _ really _secure.” He quickly shoots an innocent look at her. “Not that I would… you know, try to escape or anything.”

Hecate folds her hands behind her back. “I am secure in that as the ropes that bind you, Connor Stoll. They’re inlaid with my magic, and you and your companion have been stripped of all your belongings.”

“I’d be disappointed if they weren’t, Lady Hecate.” The constant weight of his wristwatch and the two lockpicks have disappeared from his left wrist, and his pockets have been thoroughly emptied. Connor doesn’t even think there’s a spare candy wrapper left. He wonders if they’ve taken the piece of black cloth they found earlier. 

“I had to take precautions with you in particular, son of Hermes.” Hecate’s eyes, uncannily like Alabaster’s, bore into his. It takes all his strength to stop his eyes from flitting to the sides. “I have not forgotten how you brought shame upon him in the Battle of Manhattan.”

Ah yes, the dream. “He agreed to the duel.” He shrugs. “It was his fault for being overconfident. Besides, I was just trying to save lives.”

“If I was given the choice, I would bind your mouth as well.” Long, waxy fingers trace the underside of his jaw. Connor swallows. “What type of gag do you normally prefer?”

He gives her his most arrogant smirk. “I prefer someone who doesn’t need one to shut me up.”

“Glib-tongued trickster. What do you want with my son?”

Connor drops his smirk and takes a deep breath. “We want to save the traitor demigods that have been taken hostage by the Olympians. They’re being used to draw him out of hiding. Diane and I want to secure him before the Olympians do.”

“My son has been on the run for years now. Why don’t you rescue the hostages instead of looking for him? If he does not want to be found, he will ensure it.”

“And wait for the Olympians to amass more blackmail and power on their side?” Connor shakes his head in disbelief. “I might have fought on the side of gods in both the Titan and Giant Wars, but everyone knew that the Olympians have always abused their power. It was just a shame that Luke thought that ending the world was a valid social justice movement. You’re really just going to let them get away with murder?

“As much as the gods have always relied on heroes, you can’t possibly expect me and Diane to rescue all the hostages by ourselves. Are the minor gods not doing anything about this? Aren’t you worried about your own children? Unless...” Connor thinks back on one of their rare conversations, when Diane had enumerated all the missing children.

Hecate’s waxy face flushes golden in fury. “_ Do you proclaim to understand the will of a god, boy?! _” she booms, but Connor stares at her in shock. 

“Diane didn’t mention any Hecate kid among the hostages… You made a deal with the Olympians!” he accuses. Oh boy, he’s probably a few seconds away from getting incinerated. “Your children stay safe, as long as you don’t hinder them in their search for Alabaster.”

“** _QUIET!_ **” 

The granite tiles under his knees crack as Hecate descends the steps. Connor’s face crumples in pain at the sudden heat she emanates—it feels like peeling off sunburnt skin, only a hundred times more scalding. He gnashes his teeth and just barely holds back a scream. 

“** _Did you consider the possibility that upon their discovery of your search, the gods will follow your every move? The possibility that your search will be linked to me, and another slaughter of my children will commence? By searching for Alabaster, you not only endanger yourselves and him, you endanger the hostages and their godly parents as well! You are not prepared to bear on your heads the full wrath of Olympus, you contemptible halfwits!_ **”

The scream wrenches past Connor’s mouth, and he keels over in agony. His burning forehead bangs against the cracked granite. 

“**_That duel on the Manhattan Bridge is the least of your sins which you have to worry about, son of Hermes. If you, by chance, meet Alabaster again, do you really think he will forgive you for being the one to dole out his sentence?_**” A dark chuckle, amplified by Hecate’s power, reverberates throughout the vast nave. “**_And do not turn to Thanatos’ _****lapdog ****_to assist in asking for my mercy. I still have not forgiven _****it ****_for being the one to ultimately end Lamia. She may have been a monster, yes, but she was my _****daughter****_. Her life was mine_** **_to give and take! Now there is no chance of her reforming and finding peace._**

“** _And as far as I know, Diane Stone still does not know of the role you played in my son’s banishment. Shall I tell her? Will that be punishment enough? What makes you think she will be able to stand your presence? Hm?_ **”

“I already know, Lady Hecate.”

The heat subsides, and Connor rolls over to the side in relief. 

“I know everything.”

“And you’ve forgiven this…_ this swindler _?”

“I did. A long time ago, Lady Hecate.” 

Diane’s shackles clank against each other. Connor feels too feverish to register anything. “Lady Hecate, I would go to great lengths to save Alabaster and my former comrades. And so would Connor, even if he does not show it. If it means that you would disavow us, then so be it. We will take what we can, and we will not rest until he is safe.”

Hecate gives a disdainful snort. “And why should I trust the two of you with such an important mission?”

Connor manages a wheeze through his parched throat. “Who better to use as scapegoats?” he rasps sardonically.

“Mn. Consider this penance for our sins against your revered household.”

Another wheeze leaves his lungs. _ Revered household? _Who still talks like that?

“Get up, son of Hermes.”

A blurry glow of green illuminates the corner of his eye, and the next thing he knows, Diane’s firm hands are helping him sit up. She doesn’t so much as flinch from the extreme heat simmering in his body. 

“You’re lucky Death’s lapdog is so compassionate and diplomatic, Connor Stoll. I hold much respect for both of your fathers, and so I will forgive your slight against me.”

“I apologize on his behalf, milady. He was simply not expecting for you to take the measures that your love for your children would bring about.”

The goddess snorts. “Perhaps the son of Hermes can take some lessons on the economy of words and respect from you. I heard nothing but worthless gibberish come out of his mouth.” She pauses. “On the other hand, despite you having murdered my daughter, we are well met. Under better circumstances, I would deem you undeserving of your moniker.”

Diane bows to Hecate. “This one is honored, milady.”

“Hmph. Do not be complacent; I have hardly been convinced to let the two of you go just yet. But you will not be harmed here. On that you have my word.”

“Thank you, milady.”

“My servants will bring you the necessary supplies. In the meantime, I will leave you a mark of my goodwill.”

“We are eternally grateful, milady.”

The dull grays of the world are washed with a vibrant green for the briefest second before reverting back to an unremarkable color. Connor’s vision blurs in and out of focus, and his hearing is overcome with blood relentlessly roaring in his ears. 

“She’s gone.” A cool hand rests on his burning forehead. “She left us the cloth from Alabaster’s bulletproof vest.”

His lips feel drier than the Sahara Desert. He can only produce a pained cough scrapes against his windpipe. 

“Connor.” The coolness on his forehead moves down to his cheeks. “I’m here.”

“Who…”

“It’s Diane. I’m here.”

“Diane?” he hears himself utter. His eyelids mindlessly flutter at the ceiling. The rest of his skin feels distant—unreal, abstract. There is only the coolness on his face and what feels like a scalding furnace inside him. His tongue moves of its own accord: “Di?”

He hears a stutter in her breath. “I’m here.”

“Di, how are you here?” he mumbles drowsily. “I thought you were dead…”

“I’m here.” He’s turned over to his side. His head is pillowed against a firm shoulder. “I’m here.”

He turns his face into the soft cloth. “I feel like… When I wake up, you’ll just be a dream.”

“I’ll still be here when you wake up.” A hand runs down his face. 

“Okay. Okay…”

* * *

_ Everything in life is a gamble if you make it one. You win some, you lose some. _

“Why would I fight you?” Alabaster sneered. “My unit can crush yours in a few minutes. I can crush you in a few seconds. Either way, you lose, Stoll.”

Connor shrugged. “Like you said. It’s a win-win situation for you. But it doesn’t mean that my battalion can’t put up a fight against yours. You think we can’t take a few Hecate kids down?”

Alabaster should have rebutted as soon as he could have. Instead, he faltered, eyes flickering to his siblings, who were putting on a brave face but in reality were just as young as the rest of Cabin Eleven. 

He’d given Connor an opening. 

So Connor ruthlessly pressed on. “Why put your siblings in danger, leave the possibility of some of those cute faces dying? You’re not gonna sleep well ever again, Alabaster, if that happens, and you know that there could have only been one death.”

There has always been a shared understanding between them; Connor was the eldest of his pack, Alabaster the strongest of his. 

* * *

His own dry coughing shocks him out of his sleep. His restraints must have been released at some point, given the freedom his hands experience when they fly up to his throat.

Gentle hands tilt his head back and pour something into his mouth. The taste of his mother’s chocolate babkas flood his taste buds. 

“Rest some more. You need to sweat out your fever.” The next liquid he’s made to drink is full-bodied but mild—almost like milk, but with a nutty aftertaste. He licks his dry lips to chase after its remnants, but his eyes droop on him before he can ask for more.

* * *

The duel might have lasted for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours. All Connor knew was that the lives of his half-siblings and friends, the soldiers that had been entrusted to him by Percy, the lives of half of his cabinmates, were all in his hands. 

It didn’t matter that Connor’s powers were paltry and irrelevant in the face of Alabaster’s magic. It didn’t matter that Connor was practically prostrated before his feet, coughing up mouthfuls of blood and smarting from his body being made a canvas of bruises and gashes.

The kids behind his slumped back were depending on him. 

“Magic…” Alabaster looked like a god with the moon shining over his head. An emaciated god, but a god nonetheless. Connor gaped up at him. “Magic draws its power from intentions.”

Connor tried to laugh, but the sound that escaped him was a half-sob, congested by the blood dripping from the roof of his mouth into his throat. “So you do really want to kill me that badly? Huh, Witch Boy?”

Alabaster’s eyes might have been sad, or they might have been bloodthirsty. Either way, Connor would never find out, because right at that moment, they began to glow. 

“You proposed this duel, Connor Stoll.” His voice was soft, and Connor really wished it didn’t speak such deadly incantations. “Time to lie in the bed you’ve made for yourself.”

As Alabaster began his chanting, Connor closed his eyes and inhaled the cool air of a summer night.

* * *

He yanks himself out of the dream and bolts upright. He doesn’t want to relive it. 

Diane’s sleeping next to him on the cracked floor of the church, only a threadbare blanket sparing her from the tons of dust that have gathered over the years. She has turned onto her side so that her back is facing towards him, and Connor rubs his eyes in confusion at what he sees. 

The upper half of her back is bare—or rather, someone had cut a window in the back of her shirt to expose her shoulder blades and the area between them. 

As if possessed, his hand drifts outwards. Fingers outstretched and all. 

If he were thinking logically, he’d rationalize that he was making sure it wasn’t another one of Hecate’s illusions. 

The moment his fingers brush ever-so-slightly against the pale knob of her spine, she turns over to look at him, eyes swollen but very much alert. She wastes no time pushing him down by the shoulder and slapping another wet towel on his forehead. 

He can’t stop staring at her. “Why the heck do you have a reverse boob window?” he blurts out, and he’s pretty sure he’s never sounded this stupid in his life. Like, ever. 

She brings a steaming mug close to his face. The fumes of what he assumes is the poppy milk drift to his eyes, and they start itching and pleading for sleep once more. He thinks he almost sees a sad smile. 

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” is the last thing he hears before he passes out yet again. 

* * *

Secure from under the hood and the enchantments that obscure his face and his voice, he uttered, “He deserves to be banished entirely from our world.”

Alabaster’s exhausted face crumpled in on itself. 

Zeus rose from his marble throne, and the air groaned under the ozone he exuded. “Very well.”

His giant arm raised the Master Bolt straight to Alabaster’s face. What little spark remained in his unique eyes dulled, and he bowed his head. 

The world erupts in a flash of lightning and Alabaster’s howl of misery. 

And then—

“**ALABASTER!**”

A great shadow broke through the blinding beam of the Master Bolt, and hell was wrecked loose upon the heavens. 

* * *

“Girls don’t have cooties. Boys do. It’s why girls grow up pretty. Boys grow up ugly.”

“Are you calling me ugly?!”

“Lou Ellen’s gonna be ugly now, Cecil kissed her.”

“Wasn’t that only in a dream though?”

“Well… Isn’t that even worse? Her _ soul _will have cooties, since it was a dream!”

“What?”

Like the last time he had this dream, Connor heard the rapidly approaching footsteps before he saw the legs that were disturbing the sand. Then he saw the combat boots. 

Pale hands suddenly reached out to grab Rosie. The sand mound over her body crumbled into pieces as she was lifted. 

“_ Jie! _ They wouldn’t tell me where you were!”

“Rosie—” Connor thought it impossible, but the deepness of her voice in the present somehow paled in comparison to the hoarse and throaty one she had before— “I keep telling you not to gossip about other people’s dreams.”

“I’m sorry, _ Jie, _” Rosie whined. “Mr. Connor pulled it out of me.”

The feet turned to him. 

Then they turned away. 

The unnatural cold came again, and this time, Connor was prepared to steel himself against it. He ground his teeth so hard that his jaw felt like it was going to lock.

When her chilling aura subsided, Connor forced his eyes upward, telling his mind over and over again _ I know her face, I know this memory—I should know it—her— _

The sun glared into his eyes, but Diane’s glare, even on her gaunt, sorrowful, sixteen-year-old face, felt far more searing. She looked accusatory, tucking Rosie’s face into her neck. 

Six years ago, Connor had wondered if she knew the truth. Six years later, the same question fills his mind. 

“Diane Stone!” Clarisse La Rue thundered, somewhere from over the crest of the hill that led down to the beach. “You’re not allowed to leave my sight, you puny runt—!”

“Hello,” he said breathlessly. The feared daughter of Thanatos, the vessel of untold power (_ the source of a good chunk of his trauma _), his would-be nemesis was face-to-face with him. 

And she didn’t look terrifying or even intimidating, as he had imagined she would be.

She looked… She looked—

* * *

She looks like an angel carved from marble.

At the first unintelligible sound that leaves his mouth, Diane hurries over to his side and offers him a sip of nectar. Instead of taking a few restrained, refined sips from the mouth of the cup, he grabs her wrist and downs half of it in one go like a shot. Sure enough, it tastes like his mother’s babkas in liquid form, and he feels safety and warmth zip through him like a racecar. 

She looks at him disapprovingly. “Too much and too quickly,” she pointedly says. 

“Eh, let’s get this over with,” he croaks. “What embarrassing shit did I go through, and what do I have to do for you to not use it against me as blackmail?”

A soft huff leaves her lips. “No blackmail. But you talked a lot in your sleep.”

His eyebrows knit together. “Like what?” he asks warily. 

She puts the cup of nectar down on the dusty floor. “I didn’t listen, out of respect,” she says simply. 

“That’s not possible.” He squints at her, looking for some sign that she’s lying. Well, as much as he could gather from a face of stone. “Well… I….”

She holds his gaze. “What?”

_ Do you genuinely know what I did to your boyfriend? _ he thinks, but he’s too cowardly to voice it out. _ Since when have you known? How did you find out? Am I really forgiven? How much of my conversation with Hecate did you actually hear? _

_ Are you putting up with me just for the sake of the quest? _

He eyes the paper cups on the floor—one filled with nectar, and one filled with poppy milk. Wow, Hecate sure was stringent with their supplies; she could’ve probably snapped into existence a couple of nice goblets or even standard glasses, but no, she chose to give them paper cups. 

That being said, Diane _ did _take care of him through the entirety of the night—or nights? Time ran differently in the presence of gods; he’d have to ask later. She could’ve just left him to suffer on the floor. The fever would’ve eventually broken, and Connor’s godly heritage would have ensured that he healed faster and better than a regular mortal. But no, she chose to expend their stock of nectar and poppy on him when she could’ve saved them for herself. 

_ She probably woke up just in time then fibbed about something she knew nothing about to placate that crazy goddess _ , he reasons to himself. _ She has no reason to be exceptionally nice to me. And besides, with her devotion to Witch Boy, she isn’t exactly Mother Teresa. _

So he puts on his dumbest look. “Was sleeping next to me an enjoyable experience?”

She stares at him for a few seconds before taking the cups and rising from the floor.

“Hecate has provided us with a shower. Go freshen yourself up. She refuses to meet us in such a gross state.”

“A shower?!” Connor gasps in delight. “Where?!”

She points to the crumbling confession booth, which is sitting in a dark, dusty, spider-webbed side-nave. Connor wilts. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Please at least tell me the water is nice and hot.”

She turns her back to him and walks away. 

“H—Hey?! Wait, you know I get cold easily! _ Diane _!”

* * *

His teeth are still chattering when Hecate appears before them, her shoulder-length black hair so perfect and straight and _ shiny _it looks like a wig. Now that he isn’t in any life-threatening situations, Connor takes the time to detail the smaller and less noticeable of the goddess’s attributes. Like the silver runes winking in and out of sight on the surface of her black chiton, the way her feet don’t really touch the ground, the color of her nails, which are a soft yellow where his are red. 

Though she’s taken on a stature of human size, instead of the usual twenty-foot-frames the Olympians normally like to assume, her presence is no less demanding. “Lady Hecate,” Diane says in supplication. She gracefully sinks to her knees, and Connor scrambles to do the same. His heartbeat is picking up in the presence of the goddess. “These ones await your words.”

“Your father taught you well. I see why some might call you a lapdog. So obedient, so docile. But of course, it’s all just a pretense, isn’t it?” Hecate’s eyes, identical to a fault to Alabaster’s, bore into Diane’s crown. “Olympus must be proud for having forced your father to tame a rabid mutt. And for having supposedly succeeded, too. They have no idea…”

Connor looks over at Diane in alarm. Her face remains unchanged. “What is she talking about?” he mutters to her. 

Hecate carries on, as if he isn’t in the room: “Well, I suppose I could use an errand girl. I have a mission for the two of you. If you come back alive and successful, I’ll consider letting you search for my champion. But understand this—you will receive no assistance from me in any way, shape, or form.”

“This one understands, Lady Hecate.”

“Well, I _ don’t _understand!” Connor exclaims.

“Do not fancy yourself to be Percy Jackson, to be able to talk to a god like that,” Hecate says in a tone that suggests Connor should probably wither and die on the spot.

“If I were Percy, I would’ve given you the middle finger and hurricane-d myself out of here by now,” retorts Connor. “You can’t just go around likening people to dogs just because you’re a goddess.”

“Connor,” Diane interjects, and he gapes in disbelief. 

“Didn’t you fight for the Titans? You seriously just let everyone up there call you that?” he says, aghast. “You’re not their servant.”

Her eyes narrow. “I am. Rather, I was.” She turns back to Hecate. “You are wrong about one thing, Lady Hecate. This one’s loyalty is to her father. Not to Olympus.” She glances at Connor. “Her heart as well.”

“Hmm, very good. You’ll need that for your mission.” 

Hecate folds her hands behind her back and starts to pace. Connor opens his mouth to protest, but a single stony look from Diane makes him shut his trap, however reluctant. 

“Diane Stone, I understand that you are acquainted with the sister of the god of war.”

Connor racks his mental storebook of mythology. _ Ares has a sister? _

Diane bows her head in affirmative. 

“Good. And I am sure that Connor Stoll is familiar with the Seven’s individual exploits during the Second Gigantomachy. Five years ago, Jason Grace, Piper Mclean, and Leo Valdez encountered one of my most devoted priestesses, released from the Underworld by the Earth Mother.”

“Medea,” Connor says. 

“Yes. Quite understandably, the three of them left her in a rather dire state. Covered in some of her most fatal poisons, distraught beyond reason at being beaten and abandoned by a boy named Jason, no less. It opened a millennia-old scar.” Hecate sighs heavily. “Naturally, she was abandoned by Gaea, deemed useless for the rest of the war. 

“She recovered physically, but as for her mental state, I cannot say. Enyo took this chance to snap her up in her jaws and add my priestess to her crowning jewels. It is not only a great insult upon my name, but also a threat to us all. Last I heard, she has become nothing but a raving, hysterical killing machine in Enyo’s arena.”

_ Enyo? Arena? Crowning jewels? _ Connor had no idea what was going on. He didn’t like the fact that he didn’t know what was going on. Moreover: _ Diane? Familiar with gods? What the actual Hades? _

“I’ve sent servant after servant in an attempt to retrieve her, to break her from Enyo’s bloodlust, but none have succeeded so far. The few that do come back spend the rest of their days in great agony and insanity.”

“What do you wish for these ones to do, milady?”

“Remove her from Enyo’s influence,” Hecate answers. “Alive. This is your absolution for killing one of my children; you bring back another who is as good as one to me. Prove to me that you are worthy of saving my son. And who knows,” she adds, “Medea might be of paramount assistance to you if I decide to let you proceed unhindered.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Connor interrupts. “So you mean to tell us there’s still a chance you might _ not _allow us to look for Alabaster, even if we succeed on your… even if we succeed?”

Hecate stares him down indifferently. “I have the feeling that at least one of you will be indisposed for the task once you enter Enyo’s palace.”

Connor blinks. Was that… a jab at him?

“Now, Diane Stone, Connor Stoll. Do you accept my quest?”

With how supplicant Diane is being, Connor had expected her to say yes—for the both of them. He isn’t in any state to argue, after all; his head is still spinning with countless questions and confusion about everything in general. So he’s surprised when Diane says, “Please spare this one a few moments to converse alone with her companion, Lady Hecate.”

“Hmph. Granted.” She turns on her heel and rounds the altar table so that she’s a good several meters away from them. 

Diane turns to him. “You don’t have to join me.”

Connor’s first reaction is to sneer at her. What, did she think him incompetent or weak? But then he thinks back on the past few days—their fight with Lamia, their argument in his dorm room, their travel to Camp and the subsequent shitshow in Keeseville—and he’s astounded by how quickly he had gone from icy to lighthearted with her. Whether he’d thrown thinly veiled insults at Alabaster or annoyed her with his trademark pranks, she’d done nothing more than move along with a quick flick of her eyes. 

And she’d done nothing less than constantly protect his life, even at the possible cost of her own. 

She’d looked past him devaluing their apparent past together, past him holding a grudge against Alabaster, past him blaming her for endangering Travis, but when she’d asked him to trust her, he’d chosen to trust his own prejudiced memories.

Even then, when he got them into this mess, she was nothing but kind to him.

“I don’t think I’m ready to face Travis and Katie’s PDA yet,” he jokes. “This was supposed to be my break from their near-constant making out, and now you’re trying to cut it short? No way, Jose.”

“You didn’t ask for this. You wanted to leave this life behind.”

“You… are only half-correct. Listen.” Connor runs a hand through his hair. “I’m already here. It would be pretty shitty of me to back out halfway.”

Her half-moon eyes droop even more. “Saving Medea from Enyo… It would undo all the healing you have done in the past few years. The goddess of destruction will turn you inside out.”

“I’d better get started on scheduling my therapy sessions, then,” he replies easily. “Besides, I have you. And a bunch of other hostages probably suffering from PTSD, too. We’re in the same boat.”

He turns to Hecate. “Hey, Lady Hecate! We accept your mission.”

The goddess whirls around in a magnificent flurry of soft, shimmery fabric. “Excellent!” She claps her hands. “Gale will accompany you.” 

Out of the shadows, the polecat from earlier scurries to their side. Connor gives it a ginger pat on the head while Diane watches the both of them with sad eyes. 

“As much as I am loath to admit it,” Hecate says, “perhaps there is a reason why you defeated Alabaster all those years ago, Connor Stoll.”

“It’s not something I like to remember,” he says dryly. 

She gives a sharp laugh. “Well! It’s something you should get used to remembering, then. Come, stand before me.”

He obeys and rises to his feet. 

“Memory is a fickle thing, son of Hermes,” she murmurs to him, like they’re sharing a secret. “You, of course, would know.”

“Being a child soldier leading other children does that to you,” he bites out. 

“The past is not something to be feared, but your fear is nothing to be ashamed of,” she whispers. “Remember that when you enter Enyo’s domain. And if I were you, I would trust Death’s lapdog.”

The “_ I do” _lodges in the back of his throat. He can’t quite say it yet, and he hates himself for it. “You’re awfully trusting for a mother-in-law,” he snorts.

She harrumphs. “You and Dr. Claymore would get along well. Now—” Hecate strides past him and snaps her fingers. 

Blinding white overtakes his vision, then it’s replaced by a green glow. When the spots from his eyesight fade, they’re back in Keeseville, right in front of their van, where Connor had left it parked in front of Carson Gloverfield’s house. His hands fly to his wrist—

Immense relief floods through him when his fingers meet the engravings on the two lockpicks. פלינקייַט and קאַווענע. _ Flinkayt and Kavene. _

To his delight, his pockets are full with all of his bullshit once more. Diane’s kopis, her sheath, and the harness attached to it have all been returned as well. Connor spots her tucking the cloth from Alabaster’s vest into the pouch at her waist. Gale the polecat runs around her feet in frantic circles. 

Hecate is nowhere to be found. It was as if the abandoned church had been a mere dream. 

He finds Diane’s gaze and opens his mouth, probably to say something stupid, but she abruptly says, “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Before he can react, Diane climbs up into the driver’s seat and slams the door behind her, leaving Connor to gape at her through the windshield. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEFORE I FORGET:
> 
> "Flinkayt": agility (Yiddish) - Connor's dagger  
"Kavene": watermelon (Yiddish) - one of Travis' daggers, lent to Connor for the quest (bc Connor normally uses one dagger only, but Travis has two)  
*all of their daggers transform into lockpicks*  
"dreidel": a Jewish game (mentioned last chapter)  
"mahjong": a Chinese game (mentioned last chapter  
"babka": a Jewish delicacy
> 
> yes the stolls are jewish. i've been forgetting to put it in the tags and notes since the beginning of this fic...
> 
> connor's relationship with alabaster is more complicated than most people realize... and he complicates it even more by pretending it never happened tbh... im having a headache trying to keep track of all these complicated emotions ugh
> 
> also, it's really important to me that connor legit goes to a therapist for his problems. like yes! acknowledge your trauma and heal from that shit! it's worth mentioning that he's an exception instead of the rule, though - the reason for which will be explained eventually
> 
> (but the gist of it is that his memory is fucked up due to a variety of reasons, if you guys couldn't already tell AHHAHA) 
> 
> diane's nickname ("death's lapdog") will be explained next chapter. we finally get to know what the heck she was doing in the time span between the aftermath of the Giant War and this fic. wahu!
> 
> i had so much fun writing hecate in this chapter... she's so cool... 
> 
> enyo is a legit goddess! she's ares's sister and the goddess of the destruction that war causes, which is pretty metal. she never takes sides during a war, because that way, she gets to enjoy maximum carnage. yummy. anyway, i'm going to introduce a new facet of the mythological world through her, and her arena/palace/domain whatever else i called it in this chapter
> 
> ANYWAY I HAVE BEEN HOLLERING AND CRYING FOR JOY THE WHOLE DAY BC PERCY JACKSON!!!!!!! IS !!!!!!!!! GETTING A TV SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM SO HAPPY TJEADFKVNKMXCKJSD THIS IS MY WHOLE CHILDHOOD GETTING THE QUALITY CONTENT IT DESERVES MHHMMMMMMMMMMMMHHHHHHH PERCY JACKSON SINGLEHANDEDLY SAVED 2020 FOR ME GODS BLESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM SO EXCITED AA A A A A A AA A A
> 
> kudos and comments always make me smile! <3 hopefully i update the next chapter as fast as i did this one haha


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temptations and distractions are coming to knock at Connor's door. Unfortunately, he has no door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning/s: drinking and smoking,,,, connor is such a fratboy i hate him

The next few hours are the most awkward hours of Connor’s life. 

The reason isn’t so much in the silence itself but the reason behind it. The previous times they rode together in absolute silence, it was thanks to Diane being… well, Diane. But now, there is something pointed about the quiet between them. 

Connor shifts in his seat for the umpteenth time that day. It’s as if he’s the only one with ADHD in this car. He drums his fingers along the dashboard, hums a few jaunty tunes, makes loud noises, and tries to be annoying in general (short of actually starting a conversation with her). Nothing. Not even a single twitch of any one of her facial muscles. 

Gale the polecat scurries around in the backseat that they put down for her, the sound of her claws scritching against the leather cushion an amiable accompaniment to Connor’s never-ending fidgeting. The hum of the van’s sounds like a woodwind tune. Connor wonders if Gale poops. He hopes not. 

If there’s one thing worth noticing about Diane though, it’s that she’s finally ditched her leather jacket. She looks even more intimidating without it. The fall of the jacket’s sleeves hid much of the shape of her arms, which are possibly the next closest thing to Connor’s religion at the moment, because despite her sleeves coming almost all the way down to her elbows, they’re also form-fitting and doing  _ absolutely nothing  _ to hide the flex of her driving arm. If anything, the contrast between her shirt and her pale skin is giving Connor more reason to turn his head and admire. From objective and aesthetic reasons, of course. 

Also, her pale fingers, wrapped around the wheel in those fingerless gloves—

Wow. Connor thinks he may be skirting “objective and aesthetic reasons” here. He forcibly tears away his gaze from the steering wheel.

Anyway, her driving arm is the arm nearest to Connor, and the window that’s cut into the back of her shirt is on display.  _ No need to hide the secret anymore,  _ Connor guesses. It’s not for fashion, as far as he can tell—Diane didn’t seem like the type, and the cut isn’t clean. Frankly, it’s as if she took a pair of scissors to them and went ham. It’s a stupid place to cut too; Diane is basically wearing a “STAB ME” sign right over her lungs. 

However, the Question of the Reverse Boob Window is sadly only one among the many questions being stifled in Connor’s throat. So he sits and suffers in a boiling hotpot of his own curiosity. 

His savior unexpectedly comes in the form of a red blinking light. He stirs from a blank daze at the intrusive color flashing in and out of the corner of his eye. 

Diane is squinting at the flashing icon on the dashboard. 

“We need to refill the gas tank,” he says, already rummaging for his map. “I’ll take us to a gas station, just follow my directions.”

In a span of fifteen minutes, Diane pulls up the van at a gas station. Connor has never clambered out of a car so fast. He makes a beeline for the near-derelict payphone and shoves his spare change into the coin slot so violently the whole booth almost falls over. 

The receiver plays out a pleasant jingle, and Connor’s foot taps the beat at twice the speed. It takes eleven rings for the person on the other end to pick up, and when they do, Connor hears a distracted, “Hello?”

“Travis, you motherfucker! Thank gods! This situation I’m in right now—an absolute travesty—”

“Alright, you lost all rights the moment you said that word,” Travis says dryly. “Say it again, and I’ll… uh, turn all your jeans into jorts.”

“... Are you cutting up my jeans?”

“No,” Travis lies smoothly, but Connor can hear the slow rasp of metal against denim through the static of the line. 

“Travis, you motherfucker!” he yells again. “You know I hate jorts with a burning passion!”

“Well, you know I hate being surprised. You couldn’t have called any sooner? You literally left me on my deathbed, little brother,” Travis whines. 

“Shut up, you’ve probably been discharged already. And I bet Katie’s sleeping over. How’s Mom handling the squeaking springs at night?” he taunts. 

“I… have been kicked out of my own room,” his brother grumbles. “Mom loves Katie more than me, apparently, so she’s making me sleep on the couch.”

“Serves you right for turning my jeans into jorts.”

“Quiet, you small piece of asshole surplus. How can big brother help?’

Despite his brother having called him a little shit and filling his closet with the most abominable pieces of fashion ever introduced to mankind, Connor pours his heart out to his brother. Every little detail, every minor thought, every odd question that had come up spills from his mouth like a dam breaking free after a good rainy season. His brother interjects with “dumbass” and “haha” at appropriate times, and Connor feels all the tension on his shoulders dissolve. As much of an asshat Travis could be at times, he’s always been a good listener. It was probably one of the main reasons why peace was kept in Camp Half-Blood; if it had been up to Connor, he would’ve probably waged war on the Ares Cabin, plus whoever dubbed their cabin as traitors, and destroyed the whole place long before Kronos’ armies arrived. 

When he’s done, Travis sighs. A long, long-suffering, why-are-you-like-this sigh. 

“There’s a reason why you went to therapy, you know.” 

“I know.” He’d been an incoherent mess after the Second Giant War, not unlike those shell-shocked soldiers returning home from World War 2. Even after being treated by Mr. D and Chiron themselves, even after years of going to a clear-sighted mortal therapist, he still couldn’t handle certain things. Gore was one of those things. “I’m lucky I didn’t go straight into a breakdown in Keeseville. Also, what day is it today?”

“It’s the 29th… just kidding, it’s past midnight, so the 30th. Why?

He bites back a curse. “We got kidnapped by Alabaster’s mom on the 26th.”

“Damn. No wonder it took you a week to call. Feel bad for calling you ‘asshole surplus’ now. Still, I understand why Diane’s pissed at you. You could undo years of progress, Connor. Mom’s wallet is crying right now.”

He clicks his tongue. “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Well… You could sit outside wherever this Enyo’s palace is, let her deal with Medea by herself, and carry on after she comes out?”

“What if…” Connor gnaws at his bottom lip. “What if I’m meant to go there?”

“What in the everloving fuck do you mean?”

“There are so many missing puzzle pieces, Trav. Things that don’t add up.”

His brother is silent. 

“Trav? I can’t stand it. You know me.”

“Yeah, I do. Better than anyone, sadly. And you know what else I know about you?”

“What?”

“You’re the second smartest person I know, but you have a habit of making terrible choices when it comes to your mental health. Listen, you made a choice after the Giant War, and that was to run away. In all aspects. You ran away. I didn’t like it, but I’m your brother. I can give you advice, but if you don’t take it… I can’t do anything else but make sure you suffer the least terrible consequence.”

Connor’s mouth twists. “In all aspects? What do you mean?”

“Con, all I can tell you is that you’ve already been running for so long. No other way but to look forward.”

“So… It would be worse for me to go back.”

“Yes. Con, you can’t save the world by yourself. I’m sure there are other people willing and well-intentioned enough to look for Alabaster. Spare yourself the pain, and all that.”

“When I talk to Diane, we talk about things she says we’ve already talked about before. Am I going back, Trav?”

“Yes,” then Connor hears a sound over the line like his brother’s slapping a hand over his mouth. Or slapping his face. 

“Trav? What did I run away from? What are you not telling me?”

“Are you going through with the quest?” his brother asks sharply. Connor’s so shocked it takes him a few seconds to close his mouth. 

“... I have to, Trav.”

“Well, fuck.” Travis laughs tiredly. “No one better to go through it with than Miss Diane Stone herself, then.”

“Are you seriously not going to tell me?”

“I can’t. That would ruin the whole damn point.”

“The whole damn point of what—”

“It’s like this, Connor. You’ve got a bucket rigged on top of a door. The first person who opens it will get doused in pink paint. But when the first person that comes through is someone you do  _ not  _ want to prank, what do you do?”

“Undo the rigging,” he answers, still perplexed. 

“Right. You don’t tell the person, or anyone for that matter, because one way or another, people will know about the prank. Soon enough, no one’s gonna want to walk through the door, and the whole point of the prank is ruined. The secrecy goes balls-up.”

“What kind of shitty metaphor—”

“The best metaphor ever.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.” He glances over his shoulder, back at where Diane is refilling the gas tank. “Look, Trav, I gotta go. Tell Mom I love her, and send Katie my best regards.”

“Ohohoho, is that a request? How bad do you want the prank to be?”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Right. So the worst then.”

He blows a raspberry into the phone. “Good luck living up to me, Trav. Love ya. Buy me new jeans when I get back.”

“Hate you too, Zygote Two. Fuck off with your girl now.”

Travis hangs up, and Connor instantly feels the immeasurable distance between them once more. Heaving a sigh, he pulls out the money in his pocket and does a quick count. 

Well, if he’s gonna reopen old wounds, might as well bring back some fun times, too. He jogs into the gas station’s convenience store and slips inside. 

Finally. Connor can’t stop himself from smirking. His hands have been twitching all day.

* * *

The moment Diane sees him approaching the van with multiple bags in hand, he knows that she knows. He allows himself a short snicker as he spreads out newspaper and dumps a box of chicken nuggets in front of Gale. The auburn polecat recoils for the briefest moment before giving the morsels a hesitant sniff. 

“This is what humans eat in the 21st century, O Divine Feline,” he tells Gale. 

He hops into the passenger seat, immediately cracking open a can of beer and pouring it down his throat. Diane is staring at the stash of alcohol at his feet. He licks his lips dry. “Don’t worry, that hardly made a dent in our budget. Why buy it when you can do some good old-fashioned shoplifting?”

“There are three bottles of tequila,” she flatly says, revving up the engine. “Among others.”

“I can do all things through mischief which strengthens me.”

She shakes her head. “We can’t get caught.”

“And we won’t. Do you mind if I smoke? It’s been a while.”

He sees her lip curl. After a beat, she says, “Do what you like.”

He slides out a cigarette from his newly acquired pack and lazily runs it across his bottom lip. “Want one?”

Diane’s gaze flickers over to him, and for the briefest second, Connor swears that they swerve into the opposite lane. But she rights them back on the correct one, and he’s left blinking in surprise as he jolts in his seat. He shakes his head and lights the stick, rolling down the window out of consideration.

He alternates between taking deep gulps of his beer and drags out of his cigarette for quite some time. The nicotine and alcohol combined course through his veins like a siren’s song, pulling his muscles pliant and his tongue fuzzy. He’s beyond a little tipsy when he realizes that he still doesn’t know where they’re headed, only that they’re going south, leaving the great state of New York. 

Well, if he’s gonna hold a conversation with this statue beside him, he thinks he deserves more than some shitty bottom-shelf beer. He cracks open one bottle of tequila, and the sound has Diane gripping the steering wheel even tighter. The motion draws tense shadows across her forearm, making the blue veins under the marble of her skin starker than they already are. 

“You don’t like alcohol, you don’t like smoking,” he begins. “And I have a feeling that it’s not just because I’m drinking on the job. Quest. Whatever. Same thing.”

He wraps his lips around the rim of the bottle and upends the alcohol into his system for seven seconds. He loses count. He thinks. When he’s done, he winces against the sharp sting of tequila sliding down his throat and into his gut. 

“Let’s play 20 Questions. Except I’ll probably lose track and ask more than that.”

“You… You are ridiculous,” she decides. 

“Where exactly are we going?” he asks. “We’ve been driving in the dead of the night for how many hours, and I can’t even tell if we’re lost because I don’t know where we’re headed.”

Her eyebrow twitches.  _ Lost?  _ he can almost hear her saying. “Andersonville.”

“Andersonville? As in, Andersonville, Georgia? There’s fucking nothing there, except—ohhhh.” He leans towards her, making sure to keep the burning cigarette at a safe distance. Her nose crinkles at the smell. “Are we paying a visit to Camp Sumter? That’s where Enyo lives?”

He sits back, eyes hazy as he examines her reactions. “How villain-y. Goddess of war and destruction lives on the site of the biggest massacre in U.S. history.” He chuckles. “Fuuuck, that’s an 18-hour drive at least. How long have we been driving?”

“Three hours.” 

Connor groans. “So what about Andersonville makes you think I can’t handle it?”

“Enyo draws power from bloodlust and carnage. She never takes sides during a war so that she can feed to her heart’s content. Stepping into her domain…” Her free hand twitches towards her  _ kopis _ , which are resting beside her knee. “You will want to feed on the blood of your enemies, until it is their turn to feed on yours.”

He gapes for a few seconds, then takes another very long swig of tequila. 

“That. Is. Metal. So what, she holds gladiator fights everyday?”

He had meant it as a joke, but judging by her silence, he’d hit the nail on the head. “Well. So I’m guessing Medea is the top dog over there. Why do you know this?”

“My father and I are frequent visitors. The level of violence gives birth to multitudes of resentful souls, ones that won’t be collected so easily.”

“Ever partake in the games?”

She shakes her head. Distaste is even more evident in her face now. 

“Wait.” Connor sits up, and his head starts spinning. He pushes past the slowness of his thoughts to say, “You  _ and your dad _ ? I thought gods weren’t allowed to meddle with their kids’ lives.”

“Did you think I attended a college and studied like you, Connor Stoll?” she says softly, almost ruefully. “Not all of us are so fortunate.”

Oops. He’d just assumed that if she hadn’t attended college, she would be working, living a normal life. As normal as a demigod’s life could be, anyway. 

“What do you do when you aren’t being… your dad’s lapdog? Hecate’s words, not mine.”

“I’m afraid being Death’s lapdog is a full-time job.”

His jaw drops. He stutters around a few non-words for a good while. He’d never heard of a demigod accompanying their godly parent on their godly duties. Well, he supposes Nico di Angelo would be the exception, but even the Lord of the Underworld left his son to his own devices when the dead actually behaved like the dead, instead of a pack of disobedient puppies. Nico had a life—he had a boyfriend, he studied at New Rome, he sometimes hung out with Percy at odd hours at the nearest McDonald’s in whichever area they would find themselves in.

It was like… Connor tries to imagine interning for his dad, running around and delivering godly mail. He shudders at the thought. Ew. Olympians.

“And the Olympians just let it slide?”

“Why would they complain about something they benefit from?” Diane snorts, and the sound is so undeniably petty it jars Connor. “When I’m not running errands for my father, I’m running errands for them.”

“For how long now?”

“Since I left Camp Half-Blood.” Their gazes meet. “Since the end of the Giant War.”

“Since I stopped supervising you. Huh, no wonder Mr. D was forced to buy your shitty lie. Does he owe you?”

“I was tasked with keeping a few Maenads in captivity when he secretly held a party somewhere down South a year ago. Bad for his business.”

What do you know, he got something right this time. He lets himself have another drink. “What possessed the Lord of Death to show compassion to his kid?”

Diane rolls her window down. His smoking must’ve gotten to her. He contemplates if he should stub his current one already. “I overused my powers. I came very close to dying. I owe my father my life.”

_ Compassion, but at what cost?  _ He remembers Luke the last time he saw him at Camp, face ashen gray and bitter right before he went off into the woods to kill Percy with a pit scorpion, of all things.  _ Would you really have wanted the gods to act like normal mortal parents to their kids?  _

He remembers Alabaster screaming over the bodies of his dead siblings, a few seconds before Ares dragged him into Olympus by the hair to face his fate. 

“What was he like? Alabaster, I mean.” He tips his head back. It feels very, very light. The world is registering at least two seconds late with every blink of his eyes. 

She doesn’t answer. The silence drags on, measurable only by the number of times Connor attempts to kill his liver and lungs in one go. 

On around the fifth or ninth time, he takes pity on her and slurs, “I need to pee.”

She pulls over on the side of the desolated interstate road, and he all but falls out of the van. There’s nothing but grass for miles ahead anyway, so he does what he needs to while laughing. Oh man, college was a hellscape of academics, but Connor sure as hell misses those sleepless nights. If anything, he should feel freer than ever. He’s on a fucking road trip, for gods’ sakes, with alcohol, cigarettes, and a girl who, frankly, many of Connor’s acquaintances would kill to sleep with. 

Too bad that the road trip is for a fucking quest. To save Alabaster Torrington. Ugh. 

“Are you going to throw up?” Diane crouches a safe distance away from him. 

He zips up his pants and plops his ass on the road. “Nah. I don’t throw up at parties.”

“We’re not at a party.”

“Was that a joke?” He laughs. “Props for trying.”

“We have to get moving.”

“I feel bad.”

She reaches for him. 

He bites at his bottom lip in a (failed) attempt to stop himself from smiling. “I didn’t keep the promise I made back at Keeseville.”

Diane’s hand stills, and he takes the chance to shove the bottle of tequila into her grip. 

“Come on, I promised I’d take you out drinking,” he wheedles. “Don’t be mad at me anymore.”

Her eyes flicker to the cigarette between his fingers, then down to the bottle in her fist. 

“I’m not angry.”

Honestly, he’s more surprised that she even deigned to answer him. “Looks like it.”

“How often?”

He cocks his head to the side. “How often?” She gives a meaningful look at the burning cigarette. “Ah. I started sophomore year of college. Don’t worry, I only do it when things get really bad. Like now. No offense.”

“That’s what many addicts say,” she murmurs. There’s so much poison in her tone Connor thinks he might as well drop dead now. 

“You got history?”

Her mouth twists. 

He rams the butt of his cigarette into the pavement and tips his chin at the tequila. “One sip won’t hurt.”

And that is how, for a hot second, Connor forgets that looks can’t actually kill. 

“Okay, okay. Jesus.” He sighs. “I guess that’s yet another thing I have yet to remember.” He tucks his chin over his knees and twists his poor cigarette against the road. 

“It’s nothing personal, if you must know. Me not remembering you. I can’t remember half of the shit that went down during the Giant War. Apparently my most heroic deed is planting a landmine into Half-Blood Hill with my brother, and I don’t even remember that. But I  _ do  _ remember a good number of sons of Mercury screaming and writhing in Stoll-made boobytraps.

“Anyway, Dr. Sanchez said that memory recovery therapy isn’t actually a scientifically proven thing, so here I am, stuck with a very bad case of PTSD.” He gives a self-deprecating laugh. “Plus what many dub alcoholism, but really, I just have gods-sent alcohol tolerance… I think. But I’m not a chainsmoker. It’s bad for the lungs, and I really prefer to keep my respiratory functions working in case a monster comes for my ass.”

“All vices are equally bad,” Diane says, the edges of her voice now softer. More understanding, if Connor says so himself. She shuffles over and sits down on the road next to him. 

“My mother used to entertain all kinds. All at once. She said the same thing you did—she consumed all the alcohol she liked because she could. It was her only escape from the real world.”

“Even after she had you?” he can’t help but ask. 

“She tried. Didn’t succeed for very long.” She huffs. 

“Oh. Shit.” He can’t believe they’re having this conversation right here, right now; the conversation is strangely reminiscent of his co-counselor days back at Cabin Eleven. He snatches the tequila from her and takes another gulp, leaving it more than halfway empty.

To his absolute and utter shock, Diane snatches back the bottle and throws back a mouthful, too. Her face twitches as she registers the dreadful sting of the ethanol, and Connor has to stop himself from laughing. 

“No chasers on the road, baby,” he coughs out. “Now all we’re missing is some pot.”

“No drugs,” she grits out. “I draw the line there.”

“Aww. How many questions have I asked?”

“Too many.” She rises smoothly. “We need to continue moving. Enyo’s palace is still a long way off.”

“Killjoy. Why do you have a reverse boob window?”

“Stop—” She sighs. “Stop calling it that.”

“Laugh. It’s funny.”

Her eyes narrow down at him. “Let’s see who’s laughing when you try to stand up.”

“Ahhh, you doubt me. I—WHOA!” His entire world tilts sideways, and his back meets the road. He splays his arms out as he giggles at the stars overhead. “Hey, that looks like a butterfly! D’you see that?!”

He wastes a few more moments on the ground before Diane hauls him up by the arms and dumps him back in the backseat with ease. Without wasting a single second, he grabs Gale and hugs her, just barely avoiding the surprised swipe of her claws at his face. 

“I’m being bullied,” he sighs dramatically. “Just because you can bridal carry me doesn’t mean you should! Think about my reputation!”

“No shame in being bridal carried,” she reminds him, sliding into the driver’s seat once more. 

* * *

The rest of their road trip continues in a similar fashion: Connor continues to be a general nuisance in his attempts to get information, Diane is as stringent with her words as ever, and Gale does nothing but pace the backseat and rumble haughtily for more chicken nuggets. That, and poop. It’s a rather unfortunate discovery, and Connor thanks his sober self for having the foresight to place newspaper in the backseat. 

On their fifth gas stop (which are never really for gas—perhaps “ADHD stop” would be a more appropriate term), Connor has fully shaken off both the alcohol and the hangover. Diane deems him sober enough to let him out of the car and carry Gale into the roadside diner. The waitstaff, oddly enough, don’t make a single comment about why the hell a wild polecat was accompanying two humans into their diner; Connor supposes Hecate is working at her Mist magic again. 

“We’ll have to stop somewhere near here to refill our tank before we get to Andersonville,” Diane says, her pointer finger landing on Augusta. “I think.”

She’s deferring to him—Connor can recognize as much. He cracks one bleary eye open and peers at the map. “Eh, you’re right… Where are we again?”

“Just about to enter South Carolina.”

“Holy fuck.” He slumps down in his chair. “South Carolina? Just fucking kill me now.”

She folds the map, and he opens his eye once more at his watch. “It’s already morning,” he groans. “How are you still awake?”

“Children of the Underworld function better at night, remember?” She pauses. “Also, I didn’t consume half a bottle of tequila. Order some breakfast. We can afford one more meal between here and Andersonville.”

“You know, everything would just be free if you choose not to pay for it,” he grumbles, but he opens the menu anyway. Still, his mushy brain refuses to cooperate, and it remains in liquid form as he tries to decrypt the cipher that is the English language. 

The jukebox in the corner of the diner is playing some jazzy Frank Sinatra, and the smooth wheezing of the trumpets have his eyes drifting close again. He can’t seem to get his eyes to peel off from the scrumptious image of maple syrup dripping over the sides of what look like very fluffy pancakes, and his mouth feels as if it’s been stuffed with wool from the smoking he’d done earlier. The hangover he’d sworn was gone earlier returns full force, aided by the blazing red and purple neon signs accenting the edges of the 50’s themed diner. 

And. Wow. Those look like  _ really  _ fluffy pancakes. 

When a figure approaches their table, Connor is more than ready to order. “I’ll have one order of these pancakes, please. Diane?”

No response, which is hardly unusual. He puts down his menu. “Did you fall asleep? Psst.”

Still no response. Her gaze remains on the menu. 

_ “Don't you know, little fool, you never can win? Use your mentality, wake up to reali—” _

Not a single movement from her. Not even a blink at the fact that Frank Sinatra has stopped crooning, and all the background clatter and chatter has ceased. Even the smell of grease in the air goes stale. 

Connor reaches for his lockpicks, and as he turns to rise from their booth, a bright voice says:

“Mr. Connor?”

The ends of his daggers quickly find the throat of the person he thought to be their server, but only almond-shaped starry black eyes stare up at him. Connor feels his jaw drop. 

_ No way.  _

Rosie Liang smiles. Her top left canine is missing. Her hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks, and her clothes are stained with the yellow dust of monsters and clumps of grime and dirt, but she still smiles at him as if it’s Christmas and he’s Santa Claus, coming to deliver her wishlist. 

“Mr. Connor! I found you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter summary be like "temptations and distractions are knocking at connor's door" like shut the fuck up just say diane's arms.
> 
> i hate how the paragraph about diane's arms ended up being one of the longest in this chapter... should i blame connor or myself hahahahahhaha
> 
> also: hi rosie! :DDD


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As they make their way to Enyo's palace, Connor finds that the best solution to emotionally distressing situations is to hold hands and make eye contact with Diane. Results may vary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning/s: a bit of violence and some gore... i feel like this happens every chapter anyway... HHAHAHAHAHAH

“I knew you’d be with her!”

Connor collapses back into the booth in shock. Distantly, he feels himself sheathe his daggers. “How—How are you here?”  He scans her at lightning speed from head to toe, heart clenched as he searches around her soiled clothes for any signs of abuse or torture or injuries. Thankfully, aside from the disastrous state of her hair and the smudges of dirt along her arms and face, she seems alright. 

“I’m not  _ here  _ here.” Her smile fades slightly as she gestures at their frozen surroundings. “You’re in a dream, Mr. Connor.” 

“Right.” Daughter of Morpheus, and all that. “Diane said you couldn’t reach her—”

“ _ Jiejie _ ’s very experienced with dreamwalking. It would be super cool if she wasn’t so good at keeping out everyone’s dreams. Plus, she needs to sleep more.”

He bites his bottom lip, which has gone wobbly. “Can I—Can I hug you?”

“Hmm, we can try later!” Her smile has returned full-force, so wide that Connor can see her missing tooth again. He wonders how many of her baby teeth have already fallen out since he last saw her. “The dream might disconnect, you see.”

“I’m sure Rosie is much better than me at this.” He blinks back the tears so he can beam up at her. “You should teach me the next time we see each other. The last time I tried to do what you’re doing, the dream went BOOM!”

She pouts and folds her hands behind her back. “Mr. Connor, I’m not that good.”

“Then we’ll just fail together,” he says confidently, and that makes her giggle. 

“Why don’t you ask  _ Jiejie _ to teach you, Mr. Connor?”

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that. “Your  _ Jiejie  _ is very scary.”

Speaking of which— “How’d you know I was with your  _ Jiejie _ ?”

“You’re always with her,” Rosie says plainly, like Connor being with Diane is the same as the sky being blue. “Even when you’re not.”

Rosie Liang really never ceases to baffle him. But he’s learned not to question her a long time ago, so he says instead, “Where are you?”

There’s enough urgency in his tone to warrant her smile dropping. Connor wants to pull at the corners of her lips again, if that’s what it takes to keep it on her face. 

“Mr. Connor… Gods can track dreams.” Her hands clasp each other, her fingers trembling. “I’m scared,” she whispers. “I hear them talk sometimes. They say that someone has discovered their secret, that they’re about to be like… like Mr. Luke.”

_ The Olympians are scared that they’re about to be overthrown like Kronos _ , he translates.  _ Oh, Alabaster, what have you done…  _ “Are you with others? Have they tried to hurt you?”

She shakes her head. “No. I’m alone… I’m all alone.” Her almond eyes shimmer, but she forces back the tears. “But they’re always with me, even if they pretend they’re not there. It scares me.”

“Oh, gods.” His fists curl in on themselves, his nails leaving whitemarks on the meat of his palm. “Rosie, no one’s gonna hurt you, okay? I’ll beat them up if they do.”

She puffs up one cheek. “Why would they be scared of you? I’m not.”

He claps a hand over his heart. “Rosie! That was rude! Well, fine: I’ll be mad at my dad if they so much as touch a single hair on you. Be sure to remember what I said, okay?”

“You’ll be mad at your dad if they so much as touch a single hair on me,” she parrots. 

“And your  _ Jiejie  _ will be mad at them, too.”

At that, she gives a theatrical shiver. 

“HEY! Why is your  _ Jiejie  _ scarier than me?!”

She looks at him like he’s dumb. “Aren’t you scared of her?”

He snickers. “No! She’d never hurt me; I was just kidding.” She nods sagely to his words. 

“You’re right, Mr. Connor.  _ Jiejie  _ wouldn’t hurt you. She only looks scary.”

Before he can decide whether to correct her or to ride along on the joke, she gasps sharply and grabs his arms. “Mr. Connor! That’s a great idea!”

“What?!”

She doesn’t seem to register her words, nodding her head so fast he’s worried she might get whiplash. “My father! Surely my father will help you!” 

His heart sinks. Granted, since the end of the Second Titan War, both major and minor gods have paid attention to their children—but usually only enough to claim them. He doesn’t know how to break to sweet, hopeful Rosie that her dad might not be able to do anything, or that he might not even care for that matter. Besides, they have no way—

She sees the hesitation on his face. Carelessly, she flings her arms around him. “Please, Mr. Connor! Try for me! He might—”

Suddenly, his head feels like it’s been dunked underwater. He wraps his arms tightly around Rosie, heart stuttering so fast in his ribcage he might as well be falling at terminal velocity. But the pads of his palms and fingers have begun to numb, unfeeling of the soft childhood chub of Rosie in his hug already. He brings her in against his body even tighter, tucking her head under his neck. 

_ “Connor— _ ”

The booth before him shudders and condenses in a great sludge, as does every other piece of furniture and single human being around them.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he tries to say, even as the neon lights around them waver and dim. Color bleeds from the sky and sinks into the floor to become a mish-mash of muddiness and forgetfulness, and he cannot tell if Rosie can hear him. She’s become a lifeless mass of flesh in his arms, but he can’t bring himself to care as he pats the crown again and again, telling her it’s going to be okay and that they were going to come for her, no one was going to hurt her as long as he and her  _ Jiejie  _ were alive—

Everything is mixing together into one big puddle of a paint-like liquid, and the goop rises up to his knees as the dummy that used to be Rosie slides out from his grip and vanishes into the pool. 

“ _ MR. CONNOR!” _

“Sir, are we ready to order?”

He snaps awake. The first thing that blazes into his eyes are the loud colors of the diner, yelling shades of red and pink and violet into his irises too loudly and too persistently. His elbow is resting on a very solid, not sludge-like table, and his cheek is propped up against his palm. Gale is in his lap and hissing quite fiercely at where Rosie previously was. 

He looks up at their server. Their server is  _ not _ Rosie. She’s extremely Caucasian, with a red, peeling nose and too sun-exposed skin belying her youth. One well-penciled eyebrow is cocked up at him, and Connor doesn’t think he’s ever been so disappointed to see a white woman in his life. 

“Connor?”

The low husk of Diane’s voice has him shifting fully back into reality. He gapes at her like a goldfish for a good while, then immediately ducks back to stare wide-eyed at the menu. 

Well. The maple syrup appetizingly drizzling on the pancakes looks too much like sludge for his comfort now. 

“I’ll have a Continental breakfast,” he tells the server, “and a triple espresso shot, please.”

Their server eyes him weirdly and walks off as soon as they hand over the menus. 

A cool hand lands on his forehead. Diane then shifts the back of her hand down his cheek. 

He traps it with his before she can jolt away. “Did you know that in the Victorian Era, you would’ve gotten me pregnant already?”

This time, she really  _ does  _ pull away with her actual strength, and Connor’s elbow nearly detaches as he refuses to let go. Their hands land on the table with a not-insignificant clatter that draws the attention of a good number of patrons. 

“Let go,” she hisses. 

He doesn’t. “Rosie was able to contact me.”

Her eyes widen. “What?”

He gives a tired laugh. “Apparently your mental defenses are too strong. I don’t know where she is—she was too scared to tell me. But she’s alright.”

Connor feels her hand curl into tense fists under his. “We need to hurry.”   
  


“We agree on something for once. The sooner we retrieve Medea–”

“—the sooner we find Alabaster and everyone else,” she finishes for him. 

They shoot up from their seats at the same time, both of them rising so sharply and suddenly their chairs drag with a screech against the floor. Gale lands on her feet with an indignant screech and leaps out of the diner back to the van. 

“Uhm…”

“What?!” they both snarl, heads snapping to the side. 

The sun-wrinkled waitress owlishly gapes at them. She has their orders in her hands. “Y… Your breakfast,” she squeaks. 

“Oh.” Connor clears his throat. “Could we have them to-go, if it’s not too much trouble?”

“Yes!” Her head rattles up and down her neck at an impressive speed. “Yes, it’s not too much trouble! Not at all!”

She flees to the kitchen, the plates wobbling in her hold. 

“Uhm, maybe we should take a seat… while we wait… like good customers,” he says slowly, turning to face Diane. 

Then he freezes. 

Diane’s glaring at nothing in particular, but Connor’s honestly surprised that the counter at the forefront of the diner hasn’t melted yet. Or that none of the other customers have dialed 911 (he can see some of them shoveling food into their mouths faster and faster in between stolen glances at her), for that matter. 

“Diane,” he cautions. “Diane, turn off the death vibe. You’re scaring other people—”

Then he stops speaking—he stops thinking, too—because she turns her gaze on him. The rest of the world shrinks down to her obsidian glower. Goosebumps rise all over his skin, all the way from his neck to his calves, and his lungs constrict to trap the air in them. 

_ Her eyes aren’t really black, are they?  _ he thinks for some reason, and for all the inches he has on her, he feels miniscule against the oppressive intensity of her eyes. They’re gray, but not in the bright and knowing way of Athena’s children—they’re gray in the manner of poorly made pavements in slums that darken after a long day and night’s storm, the gray that comes from the slush of canal waters flooding the sewage systems under bridges, the gray that crawls up infected limbs that are soon to be amputated. 

They’re gray like death, and the power behind them yawns before his face with the maws of a thousand Hydras.

This is the power that drained Olympus of life. The power that Zeus himself was too frightened to do anything to but to  _ suppress _ , the power that lurked beneath a docile behavior and a placid face. 

(For a moment, he wonders how he ever forgot her face.)

“Diane,” he manages, his voice still feeling distant. “Diane!”

She blinks. Her brows pull back and the threat in her eyes fades. 

He looks down at their linked hands. He wonders if he should probably let go. “Let’s sit down and pay for our food before they call Homeland Security on us.”

Her eyes fall down the length of his arm and down to where he’s looking at. She suddenly looks as exhausted as he feels, then some more—not that she looks less frightening for it. 

“We’ll get Rosie,” he promises, “before they can do anything to her.”

The moment the paper bags land with a plop on their table, Connor dishes out the smallest bills he has on him, plus some coins for good measure. He drags Diane out the diner before anyone can protest what is probably (and hopefully not too) insufficient money for their food. 

“Get in,” he tells a still-silent Diane, before leaping into the backseat himself. “Time to test some speeding limits, baby.”

* * *

The Andersonville National Historic Site is approximately five hours away from the outskirts of South Carolina. 

Diane’s gripping the door handle so hard her knuckles are white. Her leg is shaking so fast that Connor can feel the vibrations from where he’s also shaking his leg in the driver’s seat. 

“Jamieson Tran, son of Aristaeus, god of animal husbandry,” Diane mutters. “Louie and Iana Powell, son and daughter of Caerus, god of opportunity. Madison de Armas, daughter of Hypnos, god of sleep.”

Connor knows this list by heart, too. 

“Elias Alba, son of Hypnos, god of sleep. Hailee Nam, daughter of Apate, goddess of gardens and swamps. Gilbert Aarenson, son of Bia, goddess of power,” he continues. 

“Edith Delos Santos, daughter of Nemesis, goddess of revenge and balance. Dante Huang, son of Peitho, goddess of persuasion and seduction. Amy Bloomwell, daughter of Priapus, god of fertility.”

“Rosie Liang, daughter of Morpheus, god of sleep.”

Connor gets them to Andersonville in three. No ADHD stops. 

* * *

They have to leave their van a few kilometers away from the site. Against all of Connor’s wheedling and begging, Diane refuses to let him bring anything else other than the most valuable of his valuables. “Enyo provides for all those whom she hosts,” she says. Connor just prays that no bastard decides to hijack their van and steal his backpack, treats himself to one last can of beer then one mouthful of tequila, and takes the liberty of pocketing his trusty bottle of Tabasco. You never knew when the opportunity for a little mischief would rise, or when the food would be too bland for discerning taste buds such as his. 

Oddly enough, once they park the van, Gale gives one last meow and disappears into a green poof of smoke. “Wow,” Connor says, exasperated. “Hecate didn’t even have the decency to take the polecat’s shit with her!” He supposes that the polecat had no more purpose now that they’d arrived at the site and guaranteed that they weren’t running away. 

After they properly dispose of Gale’s droppings, they take to sweating and striding under the oppressive Georgia afternoon heat, the streets near empty and the blanching trees offering them little relief from the sun. Diane’s leather jacket is draped over her arm, now that she feels no need to hide the ever-mysterious Reverse Boob Window from Connor. Briefly, as he lets himself fall back a few steps behind her, Connor wonders if the rest of her skin is paler, if she has a tan line down from the cut of her sleeves and on the area between her shoulder blades. 

His fingers twitch at the side, and he has to steeple them behind his back to stop himself from doing something stupid. Like reaching out to the edge of that maddening square and tugging the fabric to the side. Just to see an inch bit more of skin. 

They walk by the grotto of the Providence Spring, which is so disappointingly bare that Connor doesn’t even get the slightest urge to leave graffiti, not that he has materials anyway. The only reason he starts scoping his surroundings is the quick steps off the concrete path that Diane takes not five meters away from the humble stone structure that houses the fountain. 

The immediate surrounding land is arid and bare, only yellowing blades of grass spreading across the area. Diane is making trails of grey behind her as she strides off into the thicket of trees lining the site. 

“Diane, stop killing the plants,” Connor sighs. “If Katie were here, we’d have a good time quarrelling.”

As they pass the tree line, Connor hopes there aren’t many dryads living in this part of the forest; Diane is obviously upset enough that she doesn’t have complete rein over her powers. He can see tree barks blackening and leaves shrinking in on themselves with every step they take, and he winces for the trembling foliage that he treads underfoot—probably small animals hiding for cover from the two of them. “I love nature, I promise,” he says to the forest. “I have lots of satyr friends. And dryads are very pretty. Wouldn’t hurt you delicate dames. Diane might, though,” he adds. 

The demigod in question stops so abruptly he nearly runs into her and turns to face him. Their faces are so close Connor can feel her warm breath fanning over his Adam’s apple. 

He swallows. Despite the heat running up his chest and face, he can feel the skin of his neck reacting to her with goosebumps. “What?” he hoarsely murmurs.

Her eyelashes are really long and pretty. And dark and thick. It’s the only thing standing between the intensity of her gaze and Connor’s roaring hormones. Connor wants to hold her in place so that he can count them as they flutter up at him from below. 

“What?” he breathes again. He remembers the night they met, when she nearly ran into his bare chest. He hadn’t cared then, about their proximity. 

He’s finding he sort of does, now. 

She tilts up her face to him so that her eyes are square on his. The dark gray flecks that had been so unfathomable earlier now only speak ferocity—pride, but not arrogance, control, but not tyranny, jealousy, but not envy. 

She looks  _ hungry.  _

“You’re the delicate one,” is all she says, before she sweeps off like nothing happened. 

Connor’s brain is scrambling to figure out what the hell that means. In the meantime, the first thing his knees do when they regain sensation is to bring him to a crouch. He buries his flaming face into his hands and tries not to swoon. 

_ She can’t do that!  _ he thinks wildly.  _ That’s fucking illegal! That’s fucking manslaughter! Jesus, I felt like I was going to go into cardiac arrest right then and there… _

He puffs up his cheeks and blows out a long, steadying breath before rising onto his feet.  _ She’s probably just feeling the nerves… In between Rosie and Enyo, no wonder she’s so fucking intense. As if she normally isn’t already! _

_ Payback time!  _ the devilish part of his brain chimes in. 

He shoves that back.  _ Not now, you absolute rascal.  _

From what Connor can observe (using his gradually recovering braincells), they’re following the downstream flow of Sweetwater Creek into the Flint River, taking them deeper and deeper into the forest. The amount of insects Connor has to swat at becomes increasing and increasingly annoying, but of course Diane is unbothered—even they flew around her in a wide circle, which gave them a beeline straight for him. Fuckers. 

At this point, Connor knows Diane well enough to figure she’s relying on her life radar. He lets himself ask, “Are we near?” and squishes another fly in between his thumb and forefinger while he’s at it. 

“We’re here, actually,” she says, then she looks at him. Those eyes again—Connor braces himself on instinct—with the same intensity, but this time, there’s only determination in them. “No turning back.”

“No turning back,” he agrees. “What do we need to do?”

Her lips thin. The forest cover of pine trees rustles over them, casting shadows onto their faces. Diane looks all the graver for it. 

“I’m not here on my father’s business. I’m afraid we’ll have to enter the usual way.” 

“And what is the ‘usual way?’”

“Blood offering, then some.” Diane jerks her chin at his lockpicks. “If you please.”

“How much blood?” He turns  _ Flinkayt  _ over his middle finger in a practiced move. 

“Until the ground opens up,” she says vaguely. She takes the dagger and deftly pricks the tip of her ring finger with its sharp point. 

Connor takes it back from her and wipes it on his jeans. “That blood’s gonna take a while to come out,” he says. “You don’t wanna make a bigger cut?”

A drop of Diane’s blood, then another splatters onto the leaves of a growing sapling at their feet. The sapling wilts into the ground so fast it’s almost comical. “No. No cuts anywhere,  _ especially  _ not on the inside of your hand. You’re going to need it.”

“Wha—I’m not stupid. They only do that in movies because the blood pockets are easy to hide there,” he complains. 

He follows her example and crouches near the ground as they aggravate their microscopic wounds in silence to make the drops bead faster. “That’s it? A blood sacrifice to get into the domain of a  _ goddess _ ? It’s that easy?”

“Enyo wants people to come to her,” Diane explains. “It has to be easy.”

“Why doesn’t she just possess a fighting ring then? Hell, go to the White House,” he snorts. “They start wars in Third World countries over there all the time.”

“Ares frequents those places too often. She hates him.”

“Well... Who doesn’t?”

“Stand back,” Diane says, and Connor scrambles away just in time; on the spots where their blood splattered, dirt particles sink into an invisible vortex. The holes widen at a rapid pace, and they find themselves having to quickly back away as plants formerly rooted in soil begin to sink in as well. Thick, snaking roots of wide-trunked trees snap off in half and disappear into the void, which is so deep and dark that Connor can’t see the bottom. Beyond the cacophony of groaning bark and flying, rustling debris, Connor thinks he hears the rush of the underground streams of Sweetwater Creek. 

Soon enough, one tree is being felled by the gravity of the vortex. Diane grabs him and flings their bodies farther back just in time to save them from getting crushed by a towering beech tree, which slams against the opposite end of the ever-widening hole. The trees beside it soon follow, and by the time the hole creeps towards their feet, it’s big enough for four New York subway trains to pass through. 

The air stills, and the dirt settles. The rush of the water reverberates in Connor’s ears. He thinks that he hears screams and roars floating up through the hole, coming from wherever it led. 

His heart is beating wildly. “Okay, what’s next?” he breathes. 

“Offer her your bloodlust,” Diane says. “Think of the angriest you’ve ever felt.”

“Of course,” Connor scoffs. “This is what all my veteran experience leads up to.”

The Labyrinth, Manhattan, the Romans, the Giants. He has a lot to choose from. 

(Well, he can’t remember much of the last two, so it does trim down his options a bit.)

“Take it,” Diane says, “and  _ relive  _ it.”

“Can I guess what yours is?” he tries to joke, but his voice and hands have begun to shake. 

_ The Labyrinth. The Labyrinth. Camp being overwhelmed by Kronos’ monsters and demigods— _

(And he already knows, in his heart of hearts, what memory Diane has chosen. 

She has already unleashed hell upon the heavens once for Alabaster, and she will do it again, if that’s what it takes for them to get him back.)

_ —he looked ahead for Alabaster. He looked ahead for Luke, looked ahead for the traitors, the defectors, because he was willing to let go of grudges this once, maybe they’d turn their backs on Kronos! Maybe, maybe, maybe if they saw him, please, for all the love of the gods, Dad, please, I looked and looked, through all the swords and arrows pointed and flung and stabbed at me— _

“Diane,” his voice quavers. “Diane, I feel…”

She grabs his hand. They stand. 

“I’m here,” she says in a steady tone. “I’m with you.”

_ —and he finally looked to his left and to his right. A Cyclops had smashed Travis’ ankle to a pulp. Tricia, fourteen and unclaimed and so fucking obsessed with crocheting, had been run through with a longsword. Ivan, twelve and having diverted the enemy’s attention from the youngest kids of Cabin Ten, lay in a pool of his own blood and with an arrow buried between his eyes. A unit of ten screamed in agony as Kampê’s scimitars grazed their throats, and their skin shrivelled and crushed the muscle and bone beneath.  _

“I feel…”

_ A barbed spear had run through his shoulder. Unfeelingly, he yanked it out and fought through the blur of tears.  _

“I feel so fucking angry,” he hisses. 

“Me too,” she replies lowly, but red is bleeding into Connor’s vision. How  _ dare  _ she, how dare she feel sorry for herself when Alabaster,  _ that fucking traitor, that fucking piece of dirt _ , had never felt sorry for the lives of those he and his precious demigod army had taken— _ they were just children!  _ Connor had screamed in the aftermath of the Labyrinth—

_ Flinkayt  _ is still in his hand. He turns to her, raising his dagger, but she only tightens her hold on his hand, ignoring the bleeding crescent marks on the back of her hand. 

“I’m with you,” she says. 

A voice rises from the hole and chuckles distantly.  ** _How poignant. Why don’t you…_ **

**… _Come in?_**

The darkness gives a delighted cackle and swallows them.

They fall into the hole. 

He screams, “ _ What the fuck _ ?!” and panics. He tries again to slash  _ Flinkayt  _ down the side of Diane’s face, and she grabs his wrist in a vice hold. 

Her other hand is still intertwined in his. 

“Sheathe it before you drop it!” she yells over the wind whipping past their faces. 

He screams at her, then when he runs out of breath, he screams in grief. The girth of  _ Flinkayt  _ slims down to a mere millimeter in his palm, and he traps the lockpick in his wristwatch once more before he can lose it. 

“ _ I hate you!”  _ he sobs. He can’t even cry properly—the wind dries up his tears too quickly—so he pounds his fist against Diane’s shoulders. “ _ I hate you and your stupid boyfriend and everyone in your stupid fucking army— _ ”

She presses his face against her neck, and like this, the draft of their fall shoves into his nostrils the cloying scent of maple syrup, stubborn on her skin even hours after they’ve left the diner, mixed with her sweat and something underneath, something  _ Diane _ which he can’t name. He cries into her shoulder, into the wild mane of her black curls, one hand in her bleeding one and the other curling at the space of skin between her shoulder blades.

Suddenly, Diane jerks to the side, and before Connor can process what happened, the shoulder away from his face meets the side of the hole. Her body jolts against his, and it’s only by virtue of his ears being so near her throat that Connor hears the stifled yell of pain. The tunnel curves from a vertical into a diagonal path like a shitty amusement park ride, and now Diane’s using her back as a sled. 

_ Gods… her shoulder must be at least dislocated,  _ he thinks dizzily. 

The thought sobers him up, and his head feels like someone had pulled sawdust out of it. 

All at once, he feels ashamed of himself. Then he feels ashamed at himself for having the gall to feel ashamed, then he feels furious at Enyo, who must be provoking all these emotions at once, all his self-hatred and hard-won recovery. Then he feels furious at himself for being so susceptible to her power, then he feels ashamed of himself again. The feeling slithers in his gut, uncoiling and growing the further down the tunnel they slide. 

He can’t speak. 

But Diane, who is more seasoned than him at the art of not speaking, brings him in closer, and he inhales her scent. Maple syrup and sweat and something. 

Eventually, other scents begin invading his brain. The scent of dried iron, for example. The heavy tang of Celestial Bronze and even mortal steel that usually hangs in the air of metal workshops. They race upwards and intermingle in the tunnel as the screams of monsters and humans and those somewhere in between explode in his ears and make his head ring. 

When the tunnel loses much of its pitch blackness, Connor evades it by closing his eyes and burying his face in Diane’s hair. 

It’s dark enough to block out anything else. It isn’t, however, shelter enough against the pandemonium they’re exposed to when the tunnel finally ends.

They slide onto grains of sand, and to Connor’s horror, they’re stained in rusty reds and dull yellows as far as the eye can see. 

“Pop my shoulder back in,” Diane grunts tightly. 

He pulls away from her. He swears her body moves towards him as he does, but he’s too confused to think about it. “What?!”

“Pop. My shoulder. Now,” she grits out. 

The ground beneath them shakes. Connor looks up. 

They’re inside what looks like an indoor amphitheater, except no human hands could ever build something so big—Connor counts ten, twenty, thirty, too many steps rising up and away from the sand-filled arena, which rivals the area of two football fields. The glossy, golden marble steps are filled to the brim with a strange mix of all sorts of creatures: he sees paintball-splattered centaurs, slithering and seething  _ dracanae _ , silhouettes of rumbling giants yelling and smack their chests against each other, and strangely enough, mortals, armed to the teeth and yelling their lungs out at the pair currently dueling in front of them. There is no enmity, no animosity among the audience members—all of them shout for blood like it’s the only thing they need to survive.

Behind them, the tunnel of dirt swivels shut. They lay sprawled on the perimeter of the sand, directly in front of the first gleaming step. 

Connor has only recovered half of his mental faculties when his instincts scream, “SCRAM!” 

Without realizing it, they had been spat out in front of a ravenous Laistrygonian. The hulking bastard bares his yellowing fangs and draws in one long dramatic sniff. 

Connor’s blood turns to ice. 

“ _ Fresh meat! _ ” the Laistrygonian bellows, and the eyes of his fellow uglies snap to them. 

“ _ Fresh meat!”  _ their gang of ten bellows in sync, and it’s loud enough to catch the attention of audiences five levels up. 

“Connor! Pop my shoulder back in!” Diane orders. 

Suddenly, he understands. 

“You don’t have a gag!” he yells back. 

“No need!”

He swallows and grabs her, one hand on her hunched shoulder and another on her limp upper arm. 

“One, two—”   
  


Diane slams her hand down into the sand instead of making a sound. The Laistrygonians draw back, disappointed. 

“ _ Fresh meat! Fresh meat! Fresh meat! _ ” 

The chanting catches like wildfire, spreading behind them, then to their sides, until Connor can hear nothing but that cursed chant. 

“ _ FRESH MEAT! FRESH MEAT! FRESH MEAT! _ ”

The current duelers, a centaur and a headless man with eyes for nipples (that wasn’t a euphemism—they were called Blemmyae if Connor recalls correctly) and a nose and mouth for a stomach, pause mid-parry of their swords. 

Diane steps in front of him and unsheathes a  _ kopis.  _

The sound draws the duelers’ attention to them. Unfortunately, the Blemmyae has the misfortune of having its back to them, and it makes the mistake of turning around to look at them. 

The centaur sees the golden opportunity and gallops forward to bring his scythe down in a mighty swing. The Celestial Bronze blade lodges itself where the rib cage would end, and the Blemmyae has one second to make a surprised face before crumbling into yellow dust. 

The crowds roar his name; Connor can’t bring himself to care enough to learn it. 

Blade at the ready, Diane stalks towards the centaur. He starts off towards her with a canter. Then slowly but surely, his horse legs pick up the pace. 

“ _ FRESH MEAT! FRESH MEAT! STAVROS, EAT THE MEAT! _ ”

Stavros the centaur lets out a wild cry and brings his scythe down on Diane, and the crowd leaps off its seats with an approving roar, bloodthirsty once more for a new game. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Jiejie": address for "older sister" in Mandarin
> 
> i did my research for this chapter by spending like five hours on the satellite version of google maps to see what andersonville looks like. google probably thinks im a creep. also, my chapter summaries are becoming increasingly crack-y haha
> 
> hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!! comments and kudos make my day <3


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alabaster doesn't know how to feel about the fact that Connor's teamed up with Diane to look for him. Oh, and the gods are breathing down his neck, but he's not sure if he trusts Dr. Claymore to tease him about it, plus the fact that—

“No luck?”

Alabaster pulls himself out of his meditation. The sensation is not unlike rising out of a pool. 

He shakes his head to chase away the last vestiges of mental fuzziness and peers up at Dr. Claymore. The man’s kneeling on the ground beside the hole leading down into their makeshift library. 

“Nope,” he grumbles, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. He can feel an oncoming migraine. “We already burned her favorite pad thai, and I’ve been praying to her for gods know how many hours. I don’t think Mother will be responding to me anytime soon.”   
  


“You’ve been praying for five hours, to be exact,” supplies Dr. Claymore. “Come on up. I boiled us some pierogi.”

Alabaster rises from his haunches, making sure to steady himself against the nearest bookshelf as his brain pounds against his skull. The library is about as big as an ample supply closet, crammed to the fullest with notebooks and loose papers. A good number of them are strewn across the floor, so Alabaster has to tiptoe over the scarce spaces available in between them. Even when he reaches the wooden steps he and Dr. Claymore had managed to cobble together a few years back, he has to kick a few strays down to the floor. He winces with every thud that resonates in the small room and mentally apologizes to each of them.  _ I’ll come back for you later _ , he promises. 

“Maybe if you invested your time in a categorical or indexing system…” Dr. Claymore says pointedly. 

Alabaster lifts himself out of the library and onto the floor of their current house. “You’re welcome to do it yourself, Doctor,” he snarks. 

“Do I look like a librarian to you, Alabaster?”

His thumb and middle finger bent towards his palm, Alabaster traces the Collapse-and-Conceal rune in the air then jerks his glowing hand upwards.

The wooden stairs fly up and slam against the underside of the floor in succession to form a barricade against the shelves, which detach next from the confines of the library. Tremors knock Dr. Claymore onto his back, but Alabaster sits still, hand steadying himself as the whole infrastructure of the library is sucked up against the barricade of the stairs. 

When the library has condensed into one, Alabaster swipes his other hand over the gaping hole in the floor. In the blink of an eye, the empty spot of cement is filled again. 

“Do  _ I  _ look like a librarian to you, Doctor?”

Dr. Claymore huffs and pushes his round glasses up his nose. “I told you before, I will never step inside that  _ thing  _ until you clean that dreadful mess of yours.”

“Why would I alphabetize the studies when I’m just going to make another one anyway?!” Alabaster protests. They shuffle over to the kitchen, which is… two steps away. Gods, this house is somehow even smaller than their last one. The living room, dining room,  _ and  _ the kitchen were all in the same 20-square meter space. No doors or anything!

Dr. Claymore adopts the most deadpan look he can. “Alabaster, that’s literally the point of organization. So that when you add new information, you have an easier time finding it.”

Alabaster snatches up his chopsticks and points it at Dr. Claymore. “Doesn’t matter if I know where every single one of them is.” He leans over the still-hot stove and Dr. Claymore to steal a pierogi and tosses it into his mouth. 

“Consistency of mortal blood versus demigod blood?”

“Center shelf, third row, fifth stack, first paper on top,” he answers easily, mouth still stuffed. 

“Sublimation points of different monster remains?”

“On the floor. It was the last one I kicked from the stairs.”

“Correlation study between number of mentions in Homeric texts and godly power?”

Alabaster pauses mid-chew. “Uhhrr…”

“See? Point proven—”

“Left shelf, sixth column, fourth notebook. Ha!” he shouts triumphantly. 

“You precocious brat,” grates Dr. Claymore, but he pushes over another pierogi for Alabaster to gobble up. “Anything from your two suitors?”   
  


A glob of mashed potatoes catches in Alabaster’s throat, and he nearly hits his head on the counter when his body doubles in on itself with coughs. Dr. Claymore coolly slides him a glass of water, and Alabaster grips onto it for dear life. 

The moment he manages to get the glob down the right pipe and gulps down enough mouthfuls of water, he slams the glass on the counter. The marble surface rings pointedly at the abuse. “ _ They’re not my suitors! _ ” he roars. 

“You are redder than a fire hydrant, my boy. I was simply making a pun: they are your suitors in the sense that they are chasing after you.” Dr. Claymore pauses and looks at Alabaster expectantly. “Laugh.”

“Fuck off,” he spits, wiping his lips. “Your jokes are terrible.”

“You seem to like my other jokes just fine. You’re terrible at hiding your smiles, you know. But, of course, it’s always a special case where Mr. Stoll and Ms. Stone are concerned, yes?”

“Ugh.” Alabaster rolls his eyes and opts to stuff his mouth with more shitty instant pierogi. 

“You did tell me a few days ago that Mr. Stoll’s mannerisms caused your nocturnal emissions,” Dr. Claymore continues. 

At that, Alabaster takes the doctor’s bait; he grabs his glass and downs the whole thing hastily. “That was before I knew who he was!” he groaned. “Nocturnal emissions or whatever fancy name you have for them are a purely biological reaction. Maybe Diane acting differently just gave me anxiety, who knows? Certainly would account for the increase in blood rate. Anyway, I’m not lusting after that  _ traitor _ . Yuck. Diane’s fine as she is.”

“Technically, you betrayed him first,” Dr. Claymore says mildly, and at that point, Alabaster’s had enough of his mind games. He shoves one last pierogi in his mouth and storms off into his bedroom. 

“Alabaster! You still need to do some final wards for your bed! Don’t forget before you go to sleep!” Dr. Claymore yells after his back. 

Alabaster was going to go insane; this tiny as shit apartment is suffocating, and there’s not enough space he can put between himself and Dr. Claymore, magic or no magic. It takes one stride to cross the entirety of his bedroom, two to get from the living room to the kitchen , and three to circle around the whole house. 

He stuffs his face into his pillow and screams. 

He loves Dr. Claymore—that he won’t deny. The older man is a shadow of his biological father, having the same propensity for high-falutin, intellectual discussions and arrogance that stems from knowing that you’re better than the person next to you. But unlike Alan Torrington, who’d left Alabaster in Camp Half-Blood the moment a satyr had shown up to take him away, never once bothering to even show up at the end of each summer, much less write him a letter, Dr. Claymore actually cared for him. Cared for him enough to become fluent in the bumbling language of Alabaster’s bluster and near-manic need for constant approval, cared for him enough to stay by his side all these years, through his exile, through all of Alabaster’s relentless thirst to know and learn more _more_ **_more_** about anything that had so much as a drop of ichor in it, cared for him enough to _live _despite his doomed fate as a Mistform. 

It’s just that… Well, Dr. Claymore is sometimes too smart for his own good. He  _ did  _ betray Connor Stoll first. And that betrayal led to a series of events that would’ve potentially killed Connor had he chosen to hold onto Alabaster.

Alabaster likes to think that he’s good at adapting to change. Magic is nothing without innovation and advancement, of course; stay stagnant too long, and your enemies will find a weakness to exploit. His father didn’t want him? Train longer and harder than ever at Camp. No chance for him to get out of the overcrowded Cabin Eleven because his mother was considered a “minor goddess”? Fight for her recognition. Exiled? Might as well put it into good use and do some research about Lamia’s curse on demigods. 

But Connor Stoll looking for him… He has no idea how to deal with  _ that.  _ Rationally, he knows that Connor’s in it to save the kids being held hostage.

(Alabaster’s hands spark green at the reminder; the Divine Mafia really had no limits, did they? Massacring the Hecate unit at Manhattan hadn’t been enough for them.

If Diane hadn’t had the foresight to tell him to stay put, he would’ve torn his way across the world and into Manhattan. He would’ve ripped open the doors to Olympus and said, “I have survived you once, and I can survive you again,” and fought to his last breath or until everyone was safe, because no one else was dying on his watch ever again.

It’s just unfortunate that Diane is right—impulsively charging at the gods unprepared would do more harm than good.)

But if Alabaster’s going to be honest with himself, it’s too similar to the situation he found himself in after he defected to Kronos’ side. Connor Stoll chasing after him. 

He banishes the thought and tries to focus on better things. Like the fact that they would need allies and raw power if they wanted to have the slightest chance of snatching the hostages from under the Olympians’ nose. That wouldn’t have been a good thing, except that Connor Stoll was in on this, and no matter how happy-go-lucky he came off to others, Alabaster knows that the bastard has a plan. He’s forgotten that one too many times, and the last time he underestimated Connor, it led to one of the biggest factors in the Titans’ defeat. 

“Gah!” he groans into his pillow. It seems that no matter how positively he tried to think of Connor Stoll, the train of thought always led to something he’d rather not remember. 

He begins to sit up, meaning to go into the bathroom and get ready for bed, so he rolls over onto his back and shuffles against the pillows and the blankets and oh, look, there’s a pair of bright grey eyes staring down at him from the foot of his bed. 

_ Well, let’s get this over with, then.  _ He sighs and grabs ahold of the conversation before he can look any more vulnerable: 

“ _ Athene Glaukopis.  _ You are not welcome here.”

Dark eyebrows shoot up into an equally dark hairline. “No one has called me that in millennia, son of Hecate.”

He surveys the goddess standing before him. She stands at human height, looking very human in a complexion of warm olive bark, dressed like a human in a perfectly pressed maroon pantsuit. The only indication of the ichor that flows through her veins is the existential-crisis-inducing glassiness of her eyes, which are the color of stainless steel—her trademark as the Grey-Eyed Maiden. 

“I’ve been reading lots of Homer lately,” he replies. “He seemed to be a fan of your eyes.”

She looks down at herself, and her face twists in concentration. 

“You’d be taller if you left this house, you know,” he says. “I imagine it’s unnerving for a god to want to be 20 feet tall, only to find out that they can’t even reach the height of an NBA player.”

Athena’s eyes narrow. “You Hecate brood and your accursed magic,” she hisses. “No matter. I have found you, even when Apollo could not. You  _ will  _ surrender the knowledge you have discovered on your travels, or my wrath will be the least of your worries.”

“Please elaborate. I’ve discovered quite a lot,” he sighs boredly. “Also, you haven’t found me. You’re only present in my mind, I’m afraid.”

The furrow between her well-groomed brows quirks upwards in surprise. “What?”

“I’m the only being with ichor that this house can tolerate,” he explains. “It was a tricky piece of magic to figure out, but I did it. Gaea herself could come knocking on my door, and it wouldn’t budge.” He pauses to chuckle. “Not that she can now, but that’s besides the point.”

He points towards the metal railing of his humble single bed’s headboard. “I may have gotten lazy and fallen asleep halfway through warding my bed with protective runes. Most of them cover the dreamscape and mental protections, so—” He scratches his neck and lets himself have the pleasure at smirking up at Athena— “You’re only in my head. Aaaand you’re pretty much powerless. Sorry to break it to you.”

Athena’s face goes through an amazing change; her bronzed skin blanches, before deepening into an angry purple. “Laugh while you can, Alabaster Torrington. I am not my siblings; my specialty lies within the mind.”

She sweeps out her arms furiously. “You make haste for bed. But children of the Underworld have unnatural sleeping times.” She glances at the thin curtains beside his bed. They’re doing a very bad job of keeping the sunlight out. “It is noon where you are, then.”

His fist curls in the bedsheets. 

Her bright eyes dart down to his clenched hands, and she sneers. “You use chopsticks to eat. No forks or spoons to speak of. Not even a knife.” 

“You can’t find where I am unless I acknowledge it in my head,” he growls, but Athena plows on. 

“You had pierogi as a meal. The pierogi was inauthentic; you are nowhere near Europe.” Her eyes shift downwards, and Alabaster realizes with a jolt that she’s looking straight at the electrical socket underneath his bedside table. “Type A sockets. You’re in East Asia. 30-, 40-square meter apartments like these are common in highly urbanized cities.”

She bends her torso towards him, and Alabaster resists the urge to cower before her like a child. Even when she’s forced into a mortal form, Athena is one of the most fearsome Olympians. 

Her grey eyes light up, and Alabaster knows she’s heard his thoughts. He locks his jaw and drags out the staredown, his Greek-fire green on unfathomable steel. 

“The label on your pierogi was Vietnamese,” she snarls, in the manner of a hunting dog finally sinking its canines into its defenseless prey. “Do not think you can hide from us, Alabaster Torrington. We will find you and deliver unto you what is just for possessing such forbidden knowledge.”

He draws in a breath as steadily as he can. His heart is pounding like crazy. 

“I’ll have you know,” he starts, “that none of your hostages know where I am.”

She blinks. 

“Yes, I know you’ve kidnapped my former subordinates. I have managed to avoid gods and monsters alike for years now. You think I can’t know something as simple as that?”

He rolls from his bed and crouches down to reach under his bedside table. “And I’m not coming for them, if that’s what you were hoping for.”

He pulls, and the socket comes clean out of the wall—to reveal only a bare grey wall behind it. No wires running under it. 

“You know,” he says conversationally, “I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with what happened during the Second Titan War. Exile does that to you, I suppose—not that you can’t relate. Always been Daddy’s favorite, and all that.”

He waves his hand, and the window beside his bed gives a slight shimmer as he takes the Mist down. The orange hue trying its hardest to infiltrate past the thin linen curtains fades into a nondescript darkness more befitting a night sky rather than the noon sun Athena so smugly noticed. 

Behind him, he hears her gasp. 

“At first, my goal was just to release demigods from Lamia’s curse. Maybe that way, I could atone for all the lives I could’ve saved back in the Labyrinth and Manhattan. But—I’m sure you know this—I never really stopped believing in what Luke fought for. Besides, grudges die slow, and you gave me a  _ big  _ one to hold onto. 

“So imagine my surprise when I figured out the secret to immortality. Yes, I guessed that it was why I was being hunted. It wasn’t intentional, if you must know. I was covered in ichor for  _ days _ . Yuck.”

He turns around to face her. Athena looks so petrified she’s more stone than living, breathing being by now; fitting, he supposes, for what she did to Medusa.

“You know what’s one thing Luke did wrong? I mean, morality issues aside,” he says. “He relied on someone else’s power to bring Olympus down. He shouldn’t have expected to be king of the ashes when he didn’t tear Olympus apart brick by brick with his own hands. I’m different, though. Do I make sense?”

If Athena had held even a smidgen bit more of power, Alabaster’s sure that he would be nothing more than soot right now. But all she can do as he lectures her, the goddess of wisdom, is to tremble in the face of his words. 

“I have no intention of doing it right now, believe me,” he assures her. “I’m alone, and the gods are out for my neck. But you should make sure I don’t slip out of your sight. Even for a second. There are tons of people who would kill to have me on their side.”

She finally dares to speak. “You would not tear down Olympus. It would upset the balance of the whole world. Your mother would not be pleased.”

“Right, because the trigger-happy attitude with which you handle your kids and mortal lives should continue to be the status quo,” he scoffs. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you kidnapped kids to lure me out of hiding. By the way, Dr. Claymore and I just keep around a stash of chopsticks. Reusable ones, mind you. They’re much easier to clean and carry around than your average fork and spoon.”

Athena’s visage mars itself with an ugly growl. “You could be my son,” she lets out begrudgingly.

“And I thank my father everyday that I’m not. It’s one of the few things I’m grateful for to him. Bless his soul, it’s probably wallowing in Asphodel right about now. Should be in Punishment, if you ask me. Oh,” he adds, “by the way, you’re going to regret kidnapping those kids. More people care about them than you think.”

“Olympus’ defenses are impenetrable,” she dismisses, but there’s a nervous undertone running along the edge of her words. “We have learned from the Second Giant War—we will not be divided again.”

“Whatever, I don’t care about your petty squabbles.” He flicks his bangs out of his eyes. “It took only a single son of Hermes to start a war last time. Remember that.”

“You are hinting at something.”

He shrugs. “I’m being nice: release the hostages, or you’ll regret it. I’d love nothing more than to leave the Olympians to your bad decisions then see you suffer for it, but I’m really more concerned about the kids.”

Athena turns up her nose. “Hecate spawn have always been as deceitful as Hermes, if not more. Not all of those clues can have been faked.”

He nods slowly. “Mmh, I see. Well, you’ll never know which ones are and aren’t. Go back to Olympus, report your findings. You still won’t find me.”

“Hmph. We will, Alabaster Torrington. Powerful you may be, as Hecate’s champion of this generation, but the sanguine of mortal blood still runs through your veins.” She gets up in his face again, and he has to remind himself that she’s not actually here. “You will make a mistake. And what other choice do you have? You will grow old and die. We will follow you to the Fields of Punishment, chain you, and throw you into Tartarus, alongside your old master. You’ll be a feast of novelty for all the denizens of the abyss.” She tilts her head. 

“That bastard son of Poseidon and your daughter survived it,” he answers. 

They fume at each other, but Alabaster has a migraine and terrible sleep schedule. His eyes water first, and he blinks away the pain.

When he does, the only thing he finds himself staring at is the wall cornering the foot of his bed. 

Gingerly, he steps out of bed and goes out of his bedroom. 

Dr. Claymore looks up. “Did it work?”

He nods and begins to relay everything that happened. 

* * *

When he’s alone once more in his bed, this time fully warded against any outside influences, physical or mental or magical, Alabaster’s unable to stop himself from drowning in his memories. 

The Stolls hadn’t always been year-round campers. When their satyr escorted them to Camp Half-Blood (unknowingly beginning an era of campers simultaneously living in fear of pranks and of Mr. D’s hair-trigger temper), Travis was 9, Connor and Alabaster 8. At the end of every summer, for two years, the Stolls had the privilege of running into their mother’s arms and being teasingly dragged away to the nearest ice cream shop on Long Island. 

Alabaster was taken to Camp a few months after Luke and Annabeth’s arrival. At the end of every summer, he would pack up all his whole life’s belongings, so scant they fit in a backpack, and squished alongside the other kids in the Delphi Strawberry Services van to go home. 

At the end of every summer, he would find himself having to make his own way back to Camp Half-Blood because Alan Torrington preferred to pretend he didn’t have a son. 

On the Stolls’ third year and Alabaster’s fourth, their mother didn’t come to pick them up. Alabaster gave them nothing more than an odd look before hopping into the van. 

The next day, Alabaster collapsed on the crest of Half-Blood Hill, just barely inside the barrier. He passed out for a few hours, and when he woke up, he was in the infirmary as usual. 

The moment he was deemed well enough by the Apollo camper (Alabaster can’t remember his name anymore; he graduated that year), he made his way to Cabin Eleven, expecting to spend the afternoon sprawled out on his mattress and trying not to cry too loudly, lest Luke hear and talk to him about their parental angst. 

So, he was surprised when he opened the door to, lo and behold, the Stolls chattering away over Luke’s head as they did a terrible job at braiding his fringe. Luke’s handsome face bore no darkness then; Alabaster stared a while too long at the graceful edges of his features, and it was enough for the Stolls to notice him standing in the doorway. 

“Alabaster,” Luke said smilingly, “you’re back. How was the library?” That was the excuse he gave everyone back then. 

He ignored Luke and headed straight to his bedroll to do nothing more than collapse and curl up into a ball. 

“He’s lying,” he heard Travis whisper to Luke, except Travis was absolute shit at whispering. The “oof!” that came afterwards was probably a well-deserved elbow to the stomach, courtesy of either Luke or Connor. 

Later, at dinner, the Cabin Eleven mess table was much less crowded, but still crowded enough that his scraped knees knocked against Connor’s knobby ones. “Hey,” Connor mumbled conspiratorially. “Wanna steal some vinyls from Chiron’s office later?”

Alabaster flinched away. “Don’t you… want to do it with your brother?”

“Pah! Him? He’s about to pass out. He got homesick and cried so much a while ago, so he’s about to pass out. What a baby.” Connor stuck his tongue out at Travis, who reciprocated in kind even though he had no idea what his brother was saying across the table. 

Alabaster frowned. “Homesick?” He was unfamiliar with the concept. 

“Yeah, like you miss your family.”

“Oh.” Every time he’d tried to return to his father, he’d done so because he felt that he had to. “Then… Why’d you stay then?”

At that, Connor grew quiet. Everyone else described the Stolls as constantly looking like they were “up to no good,” their eyes “full of mischief,” but at that moment, Alabaster thought Connor just looked tired. 

“Luke told me that. Well. You looked lonely.” Connor coughed awkwardly. “Being lonely sucks, I would know. Aside from me, there’s no other kid our age in Cabin Eleven. So.”

Alabaster tried to imagine bright, dazzling Connor Stoll with his bright, dazzling, mischievous grins as lonely. He had to imagine it again, to no success. Imagining Travis, who was somehow even friendlier, as such was even harder. 

“Kids in the mortal world don’t really get me and Travis,” Connor continued. He hadn’t noticed Alabaster scrunching up his face in an effort to imagine the Stolls being lonely. 

Alabaster had no social skills to speak of, but guided by some primal instinct, he didn’t shy away when Connor looped an arm around his shoulders, or when Travis would shriek, “BOO!” at him at random times. Thanks to the Stolls, he’d get dragged into conversations with Luke and the other year-rounder campers. 

And that’s where it started, he thinks. Whereas before, he felt nothing more than despair about the topic of his father, the cruelty of time and growing up made it curdle into something uglier, something more violent as he listened to the stories of his fellow demigods. Chris stayed at Camp because the only thing waiting for him at home were fists. Annabeth’s father remarried and treated her like she was a freak. Mary’s grandparents and uncles and aunts talked down on her for being a child born out of wedlock.

(He grew thorns.)

Then the next summer, Luke was given a quest. He was rewarded with a scar down his face and a hatred that never really faded. 

And it all went downhill from there. 

Hecate claimed him. Everyone avoided him or looked at him oddly.

(He learned how to use them to defend himself. Then he thirsted to learn more, and his requests to Chiron for more books about magic devolved into shouting matches. It wasn’t knowledge fit for a child, apparently Everyone grew increasingly afraid of him.)

Luke began to talk to him about revolution, about change, out of the earshot of Chiron and Mr. D and the other campers. Alabaster watched the Stolls chatter happily about imaginary scenarios where they’d meet Hermes, he watched Connor illegally smuggle Peanut M&M’s into Camp just to burn for his father, and he said to himself, “Stupid.”

He heard Kronos in his dreams (though he didn’t know that it was him back then). When it wasn’t Kronos, it was his mother, instructing him in her craft. She would talk about the Great Prophecy, and how it was coming soon, and that the Titans’ victory was imminent—

Then Percy Jackson arrived with the Minotaur’s horn in his hand and threw the world into a blender. 

Over the course of the next few years, Alabaster’s and Connor’s paths frequently intersected. He didn’t know if Chiron had been intentional about it, but on almost every other mission for the Titan Lord, they found themselves crossing swords with each other. 

Connor was hardly any match for him, but he still charged at Alabaster with his all every time. Alabaster would think, “Stupid,” right before he’d conjure up a rune to blast him into the next century. Not that he would die from it—being a Stoll was synonymous with being a cockroach. 

A lot more things happened in between, but the last time Alabaster had the privilege of thinking, “Stupid,” was on the Manhattan Bridge, when Connor put himself in between his half of Cabin Eleven and Alabaster’s unit, and said, “You’re not gonna sleep well ever again, Alabaster, if you know that there could have only been one death.”

Or something along those lines. 

After that was just a blur of his trial and sentence. He didn’t remember much: just the all-consuming rage at the bastard who exiled him  _ just for fighting for what was their right _ , Zeus’s Master Bolt pointed at him, him sobbing an apology to Diane through the rune that connected their minds in case of an emergency—

—then nothing. 

How was he supposed to receive Connor when  _ (if) _ they finally reached him? Gratitude that he’d been deemed worth saving despite their tumultuous past? Standoffishness until Connor Stoll inevitably left?

Alabaster gives a sudden grunt, shaking off the beginnings of another trance and a headache that wants to aggravate his already existing migraine. 

“Leave me alone,” he says to the air above him. “I want to sleep.”

He can hear Connor’s laughter in his head. Then he realizes that he can’t say the same of Diane’s—she smiled so rarely when he knew her, much less laughed—and he spends the next few minutes or hours trying to remember what it sounded like. 

He doesn’t sleep that day. Or that night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Athene Glaukopis = common Homeric epithet used to refer to Athena. "Glaukopis" has been translated "bright-eyed," "grey-eyed," so on and so forth. basically just refers to athena's bright, scary, grey, omnipotent eyes.
> 
> this chapter... was such a bitch to write... like alabaster is just In His Feelings while the olympians have literally put out a bounty for his head. alabastard knows he's powerful and he's not afraid to show it. meanwhile, connor gives off confusing signals. boys, please fix yourselves. 
> 
> til next time!! every single one of u readers, kudos-ers, and commenters make me shed tears of happiness <3 thank you for pushing me this far LMAOOOOO


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor goes feral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning/s: lots of gore, references to sex, wartime rape, violent and animalistic behaviors in general

It takes Connor four duels to realize exactly why Enyo’s palace is so dangerous. 

The first is uneventful: Diane doesn’t even give Connor time to step in and help before lopping off Stavros’ arm with brutal efficiency, wrenching the scythe from the amputated limb, and beheading him with his own weapon. 

The horse legs skitter past them like they have been electrocuted, and the moment the centaur’s remains become one with the sand, the second duel begins. From several storeys above, a hellhound melts out of the shadows and makes the arena tremble with its sheer weight. Small sandstorms explode from underneath its paws, and Diane hurls Stavros’ still-screaming visage into the hellhound’s howling gullet. 

Connor doesn’t see what happens after that; he has his own problem to worry about. The Laistrygonian they landed in front of is positively ravenous, and when it takes a step into the arena, a gold shimmer runs from the circumference of the arena and all the way up to the highest and farthest seats—a cylindrical ectoplasm keeping the duellers separate from the audience. 

The crowd roars with approval. Connor wills himself to not back away. The Laistrygonian is a piece of cake compared to Diane’s hellhound—it’s only nine feet tall. 

Still, it’s got almost three feet on Connor, and its body is draped in leathers and ammo belts. 

“Son of Hermes!” the Laistrygonian booms. “Yeah, you smell like your older brother. I served under the traitor on that cruise ship, and I’m here to take vengeance on our Lord’s behalf!”

“Tell him in Tartarus,” Connor huffs out, rolling his eyes. He dodges a flaming cannonball just in time. 

Out of the military-patterned ammo belts, the Laistrygonian pulls and launches one flaming ball after the other. Connor only barely manages to not get sand in his eyes as he sprints around the arena, minefield-level explosions from the cannonballs dogging his steps. The Laistrygonian is big and strong, but he’s slow and stupid, Connor realizes. Slow and stupid enough to not be able to aim at a moving target properly. 

He snickers and drops to his knees in a slide. Searing air whistles past his left ear, and the cannonball sailing past his head smacks against the barrier. Connor finds himself having to squint through the blinding combination of the blazing fire from the detonated cannonball and the gold sparks discharged from the point of impact. 

And. Well. The battle doesn’t last that long after that. Connor sprints at a speed that regularly left even the fleet-footed wood nymphs back at Camp in the dust, and with the soles of his sneakers smoking even against the shifting sand, he takes a deep breath and runs towards the barrier at his eleven o’clock. His momentum carries him closer, closer, closer, then  _ up  _ the barrier—the contact sends electricity buzzing up his legs—until he decides he’s defied enough gravity. 

He pivots his ankles to kick himself off the wall, and just as he twists his body to slide back onto the ground, he glimpses the Laistrygonian’s eyes widen in realization. But it’s already hurled its Celestial Bronze fireball at where Connor was a few moments ago—

When the dodgeball rebounds against the barrier, Connor is thrown backwards into the center of the arena. The landing bruises his hip, but the medley of the Laistrygonian’s screams and the cannonball’s eruption is all that he can focus on. Blood racing in his ears and a manic grin on his face, he limps to his feet and watches Diane, mounted on the hellhound’s head, bury her  _ kopis  _ into the hellhound’s neck and jump off. The massive dog melts into shadows.

“How are we feeling?” he laughs when her feet hit the ground. The amphitheater roars all around them, and a golden glow lights up the apple of Diane’s cheekbones. 

Diane flicks sand out of her curls, eyes dark as they take him in. “Control yourself,” she warns, then she whirls around and slices the approaching  _ dracaena  _ at her midsection. The torso cleanly slides off the hips, and Connor watches with fascination as they melt into the sand. 

A lightbulb goes off in his head, and he nearly doubles over with how hard he laughs. 

It’s not sand they’re standing in. 

Adrenaline breaks open like a dam, purging the rest of his senses. A fresh rush of rage fills him, urging him,  _ survive fight  _ ** _kill_ ** , and he stares at the sand beneath his feet as he gasps for air. 

The barrier lights up for the second time in a minute. Breath surges from Connor’s body in an exhilarating flow as  _ Flinkayt  _ transforms from a lockpick between his fingers and smacks against a teenage girl’s bare forearm. 

He grins. So his third duel is with a nymph. He knows them when he sees one—her eyes are thoroughly bloodshot, and the capillaries so prominent in the whites of her eyes are bulging all across her face, webbed and spanning all the way down to her exposed collarbones. Her blood red lips are offset by the purple tunic lazily draped over her shoulders, and her feet are bare. 

“Are you Lord Dionysus?” the girl chirps. She doesn’t seem to notice that  _ Flinkayt  _ is digging into the muscle of her arm. Rivulets of clear, sticky tree sap run from the gash and pool on the dagger’s crossguard. 

“Yes,” he lies easily, and shoves his dagger all the way through the bone. 

The Maenad yowls in agony, and ivory-white canines lengthen from the upper row of her teeth, pricking her blood red lips and staining the sand below their feet with their color. Connor yanks his dagger out of her forearm and dances away from the swipe of the talons growing from her nail beds. 

“You’re not Lord Dionysus!” she shrieks. “You pretender!” Connor whoops as she leaps at him. “You unbeliever!”

The next few seconds, he notes, are like a dance. His laugh rings in his ears as they match each other’s pace, footstep for footstep, taunt for taunt, wound for wound. Her nails catch at his side, he rips her injury farther open. Her feet are light, his even more so. 

“I’ve missed playing with nymphs. They were one of the few people who could match me and Travis,” he coos at her, then a fresh wave of giggles overtakes him. “I’ve never tried killing one, though.”

A feral snarl rips from her throat. Her nails become a white blur in the air, and they catch on the collar of his shirt. Connor scurries back just in time, his shirt now split open until his ribs and blood seeping from the gash on his sternum. 

The blurs of the Maenad’s movements speed up and come closer. She’s leaping and swiping and jumping, and Connor goes on the defensive to block her ten nails with his one dagger. Each time he ducks from an overhead swipe, a strong gust of wind brushes the crown of his head—the Maenad is strong enough to shatter his skull with one punch. 

He takes a few more wounds to his shoulders, his cheek, and his chest, as he lets her deadly talons within his personal bubble.  _ Flinkayt  _ whips through the air and drags the gaping hole in the forearm all the way up to her elbow.

By some miraculous mixture of his stupidity and his wits, his brain manages to clear enough to yell at him,  _ DUCK!  _ The moment those talons shred the space where his heart previously was, Connor falls back on his ass and rolls away like he’s on fire. He clears the Maenad’s foot swinging out at him with a stumble to the side and grabs ahold of her arm. 

Her screams pierce through the delirious buzz in his ears as they fall to the ground. With a desperate grunt, Connor dashes some sand in her eyes and rips his dagger across the width of her neck. 

A fountain of tree sap gushes from the bloating tear in her neck. Still blinded, the Maenad chokes and sputters up the same viscous liquid running down the sides of her head. Her fangs and talons slowly retract, and before long, Connor almost mistakes her as just another teenager. But he takes one look at the veins translucent under her face, the transparent substance substituting red blood, and thinks,  _ Well, she’s taking a while.  _

He helps her along. He doesn’t know exactly how; he just knows that he wants to, just to make sure she dies, and his vision and hearing and smell and the rest of his senses breaks down into a fuzzy collective. 

When he comes back to himself, his eyes are stuck on the barrier, hungrily waiting for it to light up golden, and his dagger is glued to his hands with a gooey material. There’s a withered rose plant as his feet, black already creeping from the sepal up to its blood red petals. 

“Connor.”

Silhouettes from the audience leap up from their seats. 

“Connor!”

He absently trods the rose plant underfoot. 

Black fills his field of vision, then— “GET DOWN!!”

Four things happen in a span of a second:

One, the barrier lights up golden. 

Two, Diane throws her entire body weight at him. 

Three, his ears rupture at a succession of bangs. Gunshots, he registers. 

The bullets clear their heads. Connor’s curls are swept back by the air they split in their wake. 

Unlike the Laistrygonian’s flaming cannonballs, the bullets don’t ricochet against the barrier; Connor watches with wide eyes as the projectile  _ flattens  _ against the golden ripples. Slowly, surely, the silver material begins to drip from the bullet-turned-disc and onto the sand. 

Mortal steel. Connor’s heart crawls up into his throat. 

Up ahead of him and Diane, two twenty-something blondes decked in full armor—Kevlar vests, shin guards, and arm supports, all synthetic fiber and high-grade mesh. The man’s the one who fired the early warning shots, and the automatic hunting rifle is still cocked at Diane, who obstinately remains in front of Connor. The woman, meanwhile, is already loading ammo into her handheld Gatling gun. 

Connor outright snarls. These fuckers looked like the entitled ultra-rich bastards who paid their way through the SAT, the ones who could carry semi-autos on campus without the police so much as batting an eye, the racists who would call his mother anti-Semitist slurs for so much as daring to step inside their good Evangelical shops—

Quicker than he can comprehend, bright, bloody red fights its way into his vision, and he wants nothing more than it to overtake his senses; he wants it to fill up his ears and his nose and his mouth, wants to drown in the copper and live in it and all the high-speed fuel it introduces to him—

“No!” Diane tries to protest, but he moves too fast for her. Blindly, he hurls  _ Flinkayt  _ at the mortals. 

The world shimmers over them, and the ear-splitting  _ BRATTATTATTATT  _ of the Gatling blasts his eardrums raw. Air is barely circulating through him. He doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or to cry as the bullets pass through them, thanks to Diane’s split-second decision to make them disappear under the Mist. 

He only has one blade left.  _ Flinkayt  _ had been thrown for nothing; Celestial Bronze can’t harm mortals. 

This is the fourth duel; his brain wobbles through all the muck and blood and drudgery this place is stuffing him with, and a hysterical rasp echoes in his chest. 

Of course. No sane person would ever do this willingly. 

Diane’s shouting his name in front of him. Another round of the Gatling kicks up the sand.  _ Control yourself,  _ she had said. 

He grabs her wrist. “Kill them!” he screams at her. “I know you can!”

She has sheathed her  _ kopis _ . They’re Stygian Iron, forged to kill anything that had even a smidgen of life in it. “They’re mortals,” she tells him in horror. 

“It’s us or them!” His tongue is heavy like it’s been stuffed with lead. 

Her palm cracks perfectly square against his cheek. Blood fills his mouth. “Snap out of it, Connor!” she bellows at him. “Clear your damn head and find a way!”

“There  _ is  _ a way!” He gesticulates wildly to her swords. 

The third round of bullets startles Diane this time around, enough for her concentration to break for the slightest moment. Connor’s left shoulder explodes in white-hot agony, and the next thing he knows, his hand is coming away with bright red. His head swims at the sight of a trembling Diane barely keeping her composure as she strips away the scraps of his shirt and wounds it around the hole in his shoulder. 

The gravity of his suggestion earlier now dawns on him, the sharp pain in his shoulder piercing through the haze in his mind. Killing these mortals meant no afterlife for them, no memory nor remains to be left for the outside world to discover. Killing them meant stripping away their souls. 

Connor’s no stranger to killing people; as much as Camp Half-Blood had tried to keep to a “maim-not-murder” policy, there was only so much maiming-not-murdering you could ascribe to in two wars without getting murdered yourself. Until now, he knows his body count. 

He’s never wanted to increase it more than now. 

And  _ that  _ fully wakes him up. 

Fury drains through his fingertips, and suddenly, he slumps into Diane’s hold, feeling like a vampire had sucked all the blood and energy from him. 

“Connor?” He’s crying for the second time that day. Nausea coils up from the emotional whiplash he’s experiencing. 

“How long do we have to keep fighting?” he begs. 

“... Until the goddess wishes.” She exhales. “The duels can last days. Weeks. Months, on occasion.”

He doesn’t understand how Diane is holding herself like usual. If what Connor is experiencing is only a fraction of what Medea is feeling, he’s amazed that Hecate still sees something worth saving in her. 

He grits his teeth to hold back the fresh wave of tears. “And killing is the only way we hold out until then?”

“Us or them,” she replies. 

“Get closer to them,” he rasps.

“Connor—” Diane tries, but he cuts her off. 

“We have to do it somehow,” he says heavily. 

The Mist might be able to remove them completely from reality, but Diane can’t keep this up forever. He eyes the advancing mortals, who circling with their backs to each other, keeping an eye out for any sign of them.

Diane has no intention of killing them. 

And Connor has no desire to. Not with Stygian Iron, at least. 

For the first time in years, he prays. 

Diane helps him up from the side of his good arm, and slowly, they stagger towards the armed couple. The audience is jeering at their unseen opponents, who’ve upset the balance and are now hiding like cowards. 

“The girl with the machine gun, break her wrists. Or her arms,” he tells her. “She can’t operate a gun that way.”

“What about you?”

He smiles self-deprecatingly. “I’ll improvise.”

“Be careful,” she says, and they step out of the Mist. 

Diane moves like a shadow. Her steps light as smoke, she bats aside the barrel of the machine gun and kicks the girl onto her front. She lands on top of the machine gun with a painful “Oof!” and moments later, Connor hears a brutal crack and a scream. “Misha!” her partner screams. 

Connor pops up in front of him. “Peek-a-boo.”

He doesn’t give Misha’s boyfriend or brother ( _ same difference if the twang of those high-strung Southern notes are any indication _ , Connor inwardly snarks) a chance to load his rifle— _ Kavene’ _ s hilt slams down on the sight built on top of its body then into Misha’s brother-boyfriend’s right eye. The rifle clatters to the ground. Connor skids around it and gets up-close and personal to hold the blade against his throat. 

  
  


“I know that metal,” his opponent says breathlessly. His eyes are trained on  _ Kavene _ ’s bronze gleam. “I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it passes through me and Misha just fine. But the people who hold it… Well, it hurts for you guys, doesn’t it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots  _ Flinkayt  _ laying in the sand, not three feet away from Misha’s prone figure. She’s spotted it, but Diane hasn’t—it takes another second for her to dislocate Misha’s other shoulder. Even through her screams, her blue eyes don’t peel off the blade. 

Right at that moment, Misha throws Diane off with a wild snarl and snatches  _ Flinkayt,  _ monster dust and all, into her mouth. Arms hanging limply at her sides, she scrambles to her feet and rabidly jerks her head left and right at Diane, who backs away from the blade. She still makes no move to reach for her  _ kopis _ , and Connor has to restrain from rolling his eyes. He grabs Misha’s brother/boyfriend by his hair and shoves him into Misha. 

_ Flinkayt’ _ s blade passes clean through the man’s skull and Misha gets knocked back into the sand for the second time in five minutes. Her pained screams wrench her mouth wide open, and Connor’s dagger slips out from between her lips. 

Bingo. Like Messi, Connor’s foot swipes out from underneath him and sends the dagger flying across the sand. Diane’s hand shoots out and grabs it, and they back up from the couple, effectively forming a barrier between them and their guns. 

He and Diane could finish the both of them off with the Gatling, no sweat. Neither of them reach for it, instead waiting for the man to rise, who’s blinking blearily through a swollen eye. They watch him reach into one of the two pockets lining his military-grade cargo pants, only to freeze and blink while his hand is deep in his pocket. 

Diane tears her eyes from their opponents and looks at Connor’s hands. His left is holding  _ Kavene _ . His right hand is occupied by four eight-inch throwing stars, nestled in between his knuckles. 

“I  _ know  _ it doesn’t hurt for you guys,” Connor says. “I’m not stupid.” 

The man shakily reaches into his other pocket, but the taser’s already comfortably nestled in the waistband of Connor’s pants. 

Connor feels sorry for the mortal. He offers one throwing star to Diane. “Wanna try?”

She frowns, about to reprimand him, but he pulls his hand back. “I’m joking, I’m joking. Well, I would be if I had the energy to.”

She swallows. “Let’s get this over with.”

His lips thin.  _ You see?  _ he mentally hisses.  _ We don’t want to do this.  _

“Let’s,” he says heavily. Well, he tried. 

In a flash, they have Misha and her brother-boyfriend by the necks—Diane’s arms are curled around Misha’s head and neck, ready to snap them in opposite directions, and Connor has the miniscule edge of a throwing star against the man’s neck, already digging into meat and past muscle, drawing up buckets from the well of blood in his artery. 

Connor sets his jaw. 

_ Your sacrifice today will be paltry. No bloodlust to be gained, no enjoyment in this game.  _

The crowd falls silent. 

The silence registers two seconds late from how much his ears have been ravaged by their racket, but when it does, he feels a damp chill settle into his limbs. The coldness then escalates into an oppressive heatwave, and his shoulder suddenly bursts anew with the wrathful bullet wound. Past the pain, Connor can see the red spot on the previously white fabric spreading. 

The heat is not unlike Hecate’s anger, which nearly incinerated him.

Despite his shoulder feeling like it was being barbecued on a charcoal grill, he scoffs in triumph. 

Diane turns to him. Misha’s still whimpering in her grip. “She’s here.”

Diane said that only Enyo could end the games. 

And he’d gotten her to. 

“I know.”  _ I called her.  _

The ceiling enclosing the entire arena, as distant as it seems, is clearly a dome. In the silence, a rumbling sound echoes throughout the amphitheater, and it grows louder with every passing second.

In a dramatic crescendo, the rumble transforms into a massive explosion. An entire quarter of the dome splits into two, as if to imitate double doors. Out of the darkness revealed past the dome explodes a snake of white and gold. The thing travels so fast that Connor nearly mistakes it for a dragon, but the closer it gets, he realizes that he’d mistaken Celestial Bronze armor as glimmering scales. The Celestial Bronze tipped wings, beaks, and webbed feet; and through small helmets glared beady black eyes boring through the arena.

It’s a train of armored swans, all of them the size of a horse, pulling down a chariot at terminal velocity. 

The rumble gets drowned out by higher-pitched sounds: the swans’ war call and the delighted shrieks of the charioteer. Wheels the size of bank vault doors crash against the ground.

All over the amphitheater, the denizens sink to their knees. 

“Why did no one tell me that Thanatos’ lapdog was visiting?!” the charioteer demands. 

Her outfit and the chariot are at odds with each other; whereas the lattice of the chariot frame is gleaming golden and pretty much a repurposed relief of the goddess’s glorious deeds, the subject herself is dressed like she’s about to attend the Oscars. A hazy shawl is draped around her elbows, and a glittering jumpsuit hugs every line and curve of her bronzed, sinewy body. 

Enyo clicks her tongue. “Oh, you brought a pet with you.”

“Milady, this is—”

“Connor Stoll, son of Hermes, yes I know.” She waves her hand and a set of burnished copper steps unfold from the back of the chariot. She daintily alights and makes her way to them. “I should smite him where he stands. He called me, you know. Taunting me with the lack of love for the game.”

Connor grows more and more rigid with every step she takes towards them. And it’s not because he’s afraid of letting his eyes wander down the obscenely deep V-shaped neckline of her bodice; the hazy material of her shawl is hardly fabric, but rather, a congealed mass of translucent faces captured screaming and moaning in the throes of battle.

“Lapdog of Thanatos, you’re infamous for your dutiful persona, but  _ seriously.  _ Let your pet have a little fun.” 

Diane lets go of Misha and bows before Enyo. “Apologies, milady. It was too overwhelming for him.”

The goddess frowns. “Well, that’s the fun part, isn’t it? Where’s your father, that handsome slab of ichor?”

“I’m afraid this is hardly a business visit.”

“Ah. Well, I suppose it’s pointless to have this duel if you have no desire to participate… Medea!”

Connor’s and Diane’s wide eyes meet. 

Oh shit. Oh shit. 

He majorly fucked up. He assumed the goddess was going to let the losers of the duel live to see another round. 

Out of the back of the chariot, a bruised hand wraps around the edge of the steps leading down to the ground. Trembling, it hauls out the rest of its body, equally bruised and only wrapped in a perfunctory linen chiton. 

Connor’s stomach lurches. From Medea’s position, it looks like Enyo had been using her as a rug. 

The angle at which Medea drags herself completely misses the stairs; she goes tumbling off the side. Her head cracks against the ground, and Connor’s arm curls around his captive’s neck on instinct. 

“What the fuck?” he wheezes against the vice grip. “What is happening—you fucking psychos—”

Medea’s head snaps up at the sound. Connor jerks away, and he ends up letting go of the man. Bad move—with dizzying speed, she launches herself from the ground and at the poor mortal, who can’t so much as lift an arm as Medea’s teeth clamps around his throat and  _ tears.  _ Red gushes upwards. 

“MIKEY!” Mischa screams, and Medea releases the bloodied and torn windpipe from her jaw, only to wrap a hand over Mischa’s face. A shrill howl fills the amphitheater, and Medea’s hand starts to glow green. 

Under it, Mischa’s eyes widen. The sickly color seeps under her skin, lighting up the muscles and bones within, and a strangled scream more befitting of an animal is wrangled from her. The glow grows brighter and brighter, then—

A sickening crack, then a splurt. 

Diane, statue-like and resolute Diane, flinches as the brains splatter all across her face. Connor feels something vaguely possessing the consistency of raw minced pork hit his jaw, too. 

Enyo brushes one hand down her dress, cleaning it of any gore. She draws in one, long inhale through her aquiline nose. “Medea delivers, as always.” Her eyes land on Connor, and they resemble burning pieces of charcoal more than actual eyes. They have no whites, only a sinister undertone of amber highlighting the corners of her eyes. “Come. I believe a tour is in order.”

Almost robotically, Connor lifts his hand to wipe away the blood from his bare flesh. It’s still warm and goopy in his hands. Across him, Diane does the same. They end up having to walk around the grisly remains of the mortals to make their way to Enyo’s chariot. 

“Some servants will be along to clean the arena,” Enyo says benevolently. Then her voice amplifies, raising to meet the rest of the crowd: “Rest for today, my warriors! We will have our fill of blood tomorrow!”

Her words break the silence, and a mighty uproar shakes the amphitheater. Medea wobbles over to Enyo and presses her forehead against her feet.

“Get on the chariot, dear,” she laughs. “You did well today.” 

Medea crawls up the steps like a newborn puppy and remains hunched at the front of the chariot, drawing up her knees under her bloodied chin. Only the god of laundry (if there was one) could have cleaned the red from her white chiton, and even Aphrodite couldn’t have fixed the matted, frizzy nest of her black hair. Enyo follows, purposefully crowding her into her tiny space. 

Connor stares at her, his gut lurching.  _ Remove her from Enyo’s influence _ , Hecate had said. 

How the hell were they going to do that?

He stares at her and sees himself, inexplicably inconsolable in the aftermath of the Giant War, throwing fits in his bedroom (scaring everyone including Mom and Travis), having to stay home from school, breaking down in hallways and supermarkets and his own fucking bathroom (psychotic, neurotic, his schoolmates would say, and he’d repress the urge to scream,  _ YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I’VE BEEN THROUGH _ ), stealing the car and driving to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night (hoping that some monster would just come along and finish him, but it would have to be a worthy one, one he couldn’t defeat), and Hecate’s voice once again echoes in his mind:  _ Memory is a fickle thing. The past is not something to be feared, but your fear is nothing to be ashamed of.  _

What bullshit. Hecate knew what they were going into. Connor pushes down the rising vomit and looks to Diane. 

She moves past him, and for the briefest second, their hands, grimy from the sand and blood, brush against each other. 

Connor fully expects to recoil. He doesn’t. Diane gives him a lingering look. 

He draws strength from those unwavering grey eyes, and with a long breath, he follows behind her. He presses his body the farthest he can from Enyo. Diane’s knuckles clench, bone-white, against the frame of the chariot. 

“Off we go then!” Enyo commands, and the swan at the front of the train squawks back in reply. Ten pairs of great wings, wickedly throwing off bronze gleams with their armor, raise in unison. 

And Connor’s neck nearly snaps from the whiplash. They go directly  _ upwards _ —no build-up of momentum, only the wind tearing at his face and his body screaming in alarm at the weightlessness. 

The stones of the domed ceiling rumble, except this time, the sound is much, much louder in Connor’s ears. Opening his eyes past the tears and dagger-like gusts of air, he glimpses the same quarter of the ceiling slide back to reveal nothingness. 

All light swivels away into a vacuum once they enter the ceiling, and the wheels ricochet against the sides. Connor thinks he hears Medea squeak when the chariot takes a sharp left, then plunges downwards. 

It’s a tunnel, he realizes. Dread begins to fill him as he tries to banish the vision of Mikey’s torn, raw trachea.  _ Left, right, down, right—no, left—  _ His head spins from the fucked up rollercoaster, and it’s in that instant he knows that even with his knack for navigation, there’s no way to plot an escape from this fortress. 

“Welcome to Neo Enyalius!” Enyo guffaws as they hurtle through darkness at breakneck speed. They swerve right at a downward angle. Diane’s body crashes into his, and his neck nearly breaks over the side of the chariot. She’s also trembling. Connor nearly sobs at the relief that he’s not alone. “The perfect place to exhaust all your anger! Of course, the most popular venue here is the arena, which you were acquainted with just a moment ago.”

The chariot tilts, and only Connor’s quick reflexes save him and Diane from falling out the side. The vibrations wracking their ride escalate into an all-out earthquake; the ground ahead of them is splitting open, just like the domed ceiling of the arena. Blue light streams into the tunnel. 

When they pass right over the entrance, there’s a room so chilly the air-conditioner latches onto Connor’s skin, far up as they are. It’s dark, lit solely by the rows upon rows of computers. Seated at them are mostly mortals, screaming rabidly as their fingers blur over keyboards and mouses. At the forefront of the room is a wall full of flat-screen televisions and beanbags overflowing with gamers cursing at their avatars while sounds similar to Mischa’s handheld Gatling fill the room. 

“This is the gaming station! A recent addition, but a very enterprising and worthwhile one, if you ask me. The violence in these games are immaculate! Many of my devotees there are the developers themselves—it helps them get over their weak stomachs. Pah! They can try screaming work abuse now, when all they can do is play their creations.” The ground slides shut, but in the dying light, Connor sees Enyo leer at them from over her shoulder. “Full-circle, if you ask me!”

“More like a spiral,” he snipes under his breath. The chariot careens one-eight degrees, and this time, he crashes into Diane. 

“And here!” Another room opens up, and bright green grass hits Connor’s eyes this time. “Multi-purpose sports stadiums! Americans get so worked up over a game of football. Or basketball—the 1997 Chicago Bulls Riot was a sight to behold.”

_ This woman is fucking insane! _ his brain screams.  _ I KNOW!  _ he screams back at it. 

The chariot takes them through several plunging loop de loops. Connor’s shoulder twinges, and his stomach is barely holding its contents in.  _ Please don’t throw up on me _ , he tries to telepathically convey to Diane,  _ because I’m trying to not throw up on you.  _

They pass over another room, and the smell that comes out of this one is pungent—and familiar. Heat races up Connor’s neck as the first squeals and moans make their way to his ears, and he doesn’t dare look. 

Against him, Diane goes rigid. 

“Not for the faint of heart, I assure you,” Enyo begins. “Many tastes of those who participate in the brothel run towards the… ahem, more extreme side. Who am I to deny them, when they feed me so well?”

That’s the last straw. Connor throws up over the side, and his senses go haywire. 

* * *

The rest of the tour is a haze; Enyo hastens past the sections she deemed unimportant—the infirmary/morgue/cemetery (which very few made it out of, hence the multiple functions), yet another multi-purpose sports stadium, and a small-time chamber catering to fans of medieval-style public interrogations and executions, among others. Inhabitants of Neo Enyalius could do fuck-all in their free time as they pleased, so long as they participated in at least one of the rooms for every three days they weren’t inside them. That was pretty much the only rule governing Enyo’s domain—otherwise, it was go crazy, go stupid.  _ Literally _ , Connor thinks bitterly.

If there were any more to remember than that, Connor didn’t know. His mind is already buckling under the sheer weight of the day’s events, and the only thing keeping him from straight up bashing his head on the sides of the tunnel is the desire to not give Enyo any satisfaction. 

So amidst the flaking soil and Enyo’s gratingly poised voice, Connor’s breaths struggle in and out of his body, trying to filter out everything else but the scent of maple syrup and sweat. 

He wonders how he must look to Diane, who can see through the pitch darkness of the tunnel. 

By the time the chariot screeches to an abrupt stop, he’d just been getting used to the turbulence; his neck gives an unnatural twinge of pain, and his legs refuse to solidify. Even Diane stands up with all the strength of a newborn foal, which simultaneously terrifies Connor and makes him feel a little better about himself. 

“Such an honor to have the two of you here, in my palace,” Enyo hums. “To host Thanatos’ little mutt and to have it seeking you out personally… I must say it makes me curious as to why you’re actually here.”

That’s it. That’s fucking it. First, the Olympians acting like local high school queen bees, then Hecate with her un-fucking-justified rage, and now this—Connor doesn’t even have words for her— 

“ _ Don’t fucking call—” _

“This one is here for personal reasons, milady,” Diane hastily says, drowning out the rest of Connor’s sentence with her voice. She grips the first part of his body she can find—the back of his neck. His mouth goes dry. 

“What personal reasons?” Enyo croons. Connor can hear the smile in her voice. “Would it have anything to do with your pet?”

The grip on his nape tightens. Enyo’s burning eyes follow where he knows Diane’s hand rests. 

“Exposure therapy,” Connor grits out. “She’s here because of me. Alright? And maybe a vacation.”

“Oh, dearie,” Enyo sympathizes, and Connor  _ feels  _ her come closer. He recoils into Diane’s hold. “Don’t worry, I don’t make a habit of touching other people’s things. It is peacetime! No plundering!”

“ _ I’m not a fucking—” _

“Milady, this one wishes to retire, perhaps you have—”

“— _ SPOIL OF WAR—” _

“—accomodations for us—”

“Of course I do, daughter of Thanatos.” A pause. “Is that how your pet wants me to address you?”

“H-He’s just overwhelmed.” 

That’s the first time he ever hears Diane stutter. He nearly misses it. 

“As you previously stated,” Enyo says, amused. “Well, Medea, let’s give our esteemed guests a proper farewell. Shall we?”

Medea’s hands glow green, shedding light on a door built into the earth. It’s nondescript and white, painted wood like a typical bedroom door. 

A warning squeeze from Diane just barely halts Connor from lunging at it.

“Milady…” Her voice trails off in hesitation. “... One room?”

Enyo clicks her tongue. “You want two rooms? Back in the good old days, the victors were free to indulge in their prizes with only tents separating them. Sometimes no tents at all.”

Connor feels Diane draw a breath. “Milady.”

“I’m the goddess of war and destruction, and yet I am not a barbarian. Live and let live, Diane Stone.”

“I imagine the son of Hermes wants to be alone right now,” Diane says softly, but there’s no missing the undercurrent of steel rolling off her tongue. “At your convenience, milady, if you please.”

“Fine, fine.” Enyo snaps her fingers. “The door will take you to two rooms. Two separate ones. Enjoy Neo Enyalius, yes?”

“We will. Thank you, milady.” Diane bows her head to Enyo, then to Medea, before hopping off the chariot. She looks up at Connor, waiting for him to follow her into the door. 

Connor looks to Medea, crouched pitifully against the side of the chariot. In the scant, unnatural light, her dark eyes look hollow, like someone had taken a syringe and drained all the hope and soul out of them. Any good Greek hero would have slain her on the spot, Hecate’s quest be damned. 

Connor can’t help but bow his head like Diane, greeting Medea: “ _ Pelias fonon, Ekati ierera.  _ An honor.” He gives her a shaky smirk. “You’re as captivating as they say you are in the myths.”

Then he slides off the chariot, trying to ignore the fact that Enyo is less than pleased. His body is bruised and aching all over, and pretty much all his joints protest when his feet hit the ground. Serene as ever, Diane wraps a careful arm around his bare waist and takes a little weight off his feet. 

They wait until the chariot rumbles off into the tunnel. Enyo’s howls of delight, combined with the swans’ piercing clucks, ring in Connor’s ears even after they make their way through the door. 

Dirt turns into a polished cement corridor five meters long, and they find themselves standing in front of two doors, both of them similarly designed like the one they just passed through. 

“Which one?” Diane says. Had Connor been any less observant, he wouldn’t have caught the weariness trailing her words. 

“Ladies first,” he replies, equally worn out. 

“Mn.” Connor half-gets-carried and half-walks into the room. “It doesn’t matter. The room adapts to your needs and wishes.”

Diane gently lets him collapse in a heap onto the floor. Pain lances through his wrapped shoulder. 

Of course, she notices. She reaches out to undo the bandages, but Connor shakes his head. 

“I’m okay,” he insists, and she stares at him. 

It’s not helping things—his entire being is twitching and sore like his innards have been rubbed raw with salt and savagery.

He looks away and tries not to get angry. Or cry. Or both. “Control yourself,” she said, and he didn’t listen. Her brain must be running a reel of “I told you so!” right now. 

“Please,” he croaks. “You were right—I want to be alone right now.”

She doesn’t move. Shudders run up his body. “Maybe you shouldn’t have asked for two rooms,” he growls, “if you weren’t going to leave me be.”

Diane flinches back. Her fingers, still outstretched towards his shoulder, twitch and curl back into her fist. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

He snorts. “For what?” He tries for a lighthearted tone, but his voice comes out jagged. “I put myself in here.”

The shadows move across her throat as she swallows. “I’m sorry. For…”

For the briefest second, Diane’s eyes stare right through him, like her vision has unfocused. For the briefest second, Connor sees something odd—huge, monstrous shadows blotting out the door behind her. 

But when he blinks, Diane shakes her head, and the shadows disappear. Trick of the light, then. She rises smoothly and quickly exits his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Pelias fonon: slayer of Pelias  
*Ekati ierera: priestess of Hecate
> 
> please don't come for my ass i'm not a student of ancient greek 
> 
> anyway i feel like i always say this but HOLY SHIT THIS CHAPTER WAS SUCH A BITCH TO WRITE. notwithstanding the fact that it is literally the longest chapter so far,,, like,,, the concept of Neo Enyalius was just so fucked up in my head, so i had a hard time translating it into words. hopefully i update faster with the following chapters,,, connor and diane are coming for medea.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor's crumbling into pieces, and Diane's doing her best to pick him up—except she's not as put-together as she seems. Either way, they're both messed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning/s: unsafe medical practices, passing mentions of alcoholism, suicide, psychosis, drugs

Connor discovers quickly one very fascinating feature about his room: in the kitchenette, the middle cupboard produces all the food you want. 

He knows this because he opens it not a minute after Diane leaves the room, head and stomach still spinning, and is met with his favorite bottle of Sierra Silver tequila. He says, “Holy shit,” and, without a second thought, cracks the fucker open and downs a mouthful. 

The particular variant the magical cupboard presents to him is a notorious one. It won his heart two years ago at a gay club (the name of which he still can’t remember to this day) located somewhere in Boston, and it’s strong enough to knock an average human out within five shots. Unfortunately, it also proved to be a parasite onto Connor’s meager college funds, so he regrettably never got another taste of it, even if the sharp tang—amongst other flavors—lingered long after he woke up hungover, nude, and tangled in way too many limbs. 

Bottle in hand, he closes the cupboard again and this time, opens it to a bag of jalapeño-flavored Cheetos. Connor feels like he’s sold his soul to the devil. 

If this is how Enyo keeps people from trying to escape, she’s doing a very good job. 

(And if Connor is going to be honest, he probably would’ve been another one of the unlucky souls that breathed their last in Neo Enyalius, had Diane not come into his room. He’d never pegged himself as a guy who’d die of something as unglamorous and as preventable as alcohol poisoning but. Well. He hadn’t pegged himself as someone who would willingly return to the good old demigod life, either.)

In the span of time that it takes Connor to get tipsy, Diane showers and changes and presumably settles in with her belongings. When Connor sees her step into his doorway, her hair is damp behind her ears and curling along her hairline and neck. 

She probably expects that he would have done the same. Connor rolls onto his side, his back to her in petulance. 

The door closes with a soft click behind her. No sound trails her footsteps, which is a nice change from the pandemonium outside.

“Give me the bottle,” she says. Connor hugs it tighter to his chest. 

He doesn’t know why he keeps forgetting that she’s much stronger than him—with one hand, she wrenches the bottle from where it’s nestled and snaps off the cap Connor painstakingly screwed back on in his inebriated state. With the other hand, she hauls him up to a sitting position by his uninjured arm and rips the fabric of his shirt off his bullet wound. 

He’d forgotten completely about its existence. Diane gives him a nice reminder by upending the bottle of alcohol onto it. 

“OW! OW, HOLY SHIT!” 

Blood and alcohol drenches the entirety of his left side. Diane reaches out to the bedside table he’s leaning against, sticking her hand into the drawer and pulling out a medical kit. 

“I’m going to take out the bullet.”

“I can do it myself,” he groans. 

She presses a clean cloth against the wound. “You’re drunk.”

“Bet drunk me has lighter fingers than sober you.” He shoves the bottle into her face, which he’d snatched back without her noticing. He takes a swig, partly out of defiance and partly to dull the pain eating at his shoulder. 

“Stop it. Please.”

“Why?” Another swig. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“And you’re going to let our host be?”

He pouts. There’s not much he can say to that. “Not all of us can be stoic, emotionless daughters of Thanatos, alright?”

She pauses for the slightest second at that, then proceeds to slap a cotton pad soaked with hydrogen peroxide onto Connor’s shoulder. 

“OH SH—Okay, fine, I deserved that,” he hisses. Diane begins to wipe off the crusted blood and gunpowder remnants with precise strokes. 

He’s right—her hands are much heavier than his would have been, intoxicated or not. But her hands are still gentle, even in their clinical efficiency, taking care to not press too hard into his skin in spite of the fact that it would make the whole process faster. And less awkward. 

On the third cotton pad, Connor still hasn’t decided where he should focus on. Diane’s gaze never moves, not even for a moment, from the area of his injury. But it means that she’s close enough for him to catch a faint lavender scent from her damp crown, to see the long lashes fanning out over her cheeks. He remembers her staring him down in Andersonville, and he drunkenly blurts, “Wow.”

She doesn’t react to that. Thank gods. She instead moves to get the tweezers. 

“I’m going to remove the bullet.”

She’s wearing a comfortable black muscle tee and grey sweatpants, and her  _ kopis  _ and their sheaths are absent from her chest. Like this, the entire length of her arms then some of her shoulders are visible, and the sight of  _ her  _ fills Connor’s entire vision. The whole outfit is so domestic, such a far cry from the practical clothes that she fought so lethally in, that it makes his head spin. 

He swallows. Neo Enyalius is really fucking with his head. 

“Aren’t you going to… give me anaesthetics or something?” he asks. Sure, he’s had his fair share of nasty wounds, from barbed arrows to electric spears (thanks to Clarisse), and the Apollo Cabin never had anything more sophisticated than topicals on hand, but bullet wounds were relatively few and far in between. Besides, it’s been some time since he sustained battle-related injuries. 

A rueful furrow appears in between her dark eyebrows. “I would have given you some poppies, but you had a dose only a few days ago. It’s highly addictive.”

“Fuck,” he sighs. 

“I can restrain you.”

“The poppies might be less addictive,” he murmurs, and she huffs. But he  _ swears  _ he sees a hint of pink stain the bridge of her nose as she braces an arm across his collarbones. 

“One, two, three—”   
  


He pinches his eyes shut. 

“—four, five, six, seven—”

“You’re not fooling me,” he says tightly.

“—eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—”

“For fuck’s sake—”

The tweezers plunge into the bullet wound, and he shouts in surprise. True to her word, the moment he jerks under her, she holds him down without so much as a grunt. 

The pain is muddling his thoughts. His legs twitch under him in an attempt to wriggle out from Diane’s hold. Unfazed, she brackets his hips with her knees and  _ squeezes  _ in warning.  _ Stay.  _

He can’t move. His hand flies up to her shoulders as groans of pain are wrestled from his chest. 

The tense struggle comes to an exhale when Diane yanks the blood-drenched tweezers. Caught in between the two prongs is a golden bullet with a wickedly sharp taper to its head. 

“Owww,” Connor whines, clutching his shoulder. “That bullet’s a  _ bitch _ .”

“You’re lucky it didn’t hit any artery,” Diane says, sounding relieved. “Though it did brush your clavicle. I’m going to take out the bone fragments.”

A string of curses that would’ve gotten him banned from a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant leaves his mouth. 

Taking out the microscopic pieces of shattered bone is much less painful than taking out the bullet, which is resting in Connor’s hand. His fuzzy-feeling mouth rambles on and on, no filter, because it’s the only other thing it can do right now other than drink, which he’s half-sure Diane will leave him to bleed out on the floor for. 

“You have to take me out to dinner now. Rules of dating say that you can’t manhandle someone until the third date. Or was it the fourth? I’m not sure.”

“Mm.”

“Your precision is  _ stellar.  _ Do I have your night vision to thank?”

“Mhm.”

“Do they teach surgery up in Daddy’s house? That’s funny, the god of death teaching you how to save lives.”

“Father had Florence Nightingale teach me,” she says, her tone so flat that Connor isn’t sure if she’s joking.

“O-Oh.” He has no idea what to say to that. “I remember now. It’s the fourth date.”

She looks up at him and drops the tweezers. “That’s the last of it.”

“Oh. Great.” Then another thought occurs to him. “You should’ve given me something to bite on when you took out the bullet. I might have bitten my tongue.”

Diane seems to consider this. “Do you want me to gag you?”

His breath stutters. Then— “Fifth date,” he says wryly. 

“I see.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For how I acted earlier. I don’t deserve this—you tidying me up and whatnot. Scratch that, I’ve been an asshole to you this entire mission.” He punctuates his awkward apology with an awkward laugh. “You keep throwing your body in front of me in battle. I can’t even remember you.”

Her steady hands are threading a needle. Connor’s thankful that her eyes are resolute on them. 

“Neo Enyalius shoves the worst parts of me into its mouth and throws it back out once it’s multiplied,” he considers bitterly. 

“You lasted long in the arena. Many lose themselves after the first round.”

He gnaws on his lip as Diane pushes the needle into the deepest part of the wound and pulls the walls of the hole together on her way out. “Can… Can this place put in your head something that wasn’t there before?”

She remains silent until the stitches close up the surface of his skin. She snaps the thread with her teeth and unrolls some gauze to dress the wound. 

“... I don’t think so,” she answers. “The goddess plays on your worst fears—and perhaps our best dreams, too. I…” She hesitates. “In the past, when I visited with my father, I’ve never had an intruding thought that was not mine in some way.”

Logically, Connor knows that it would be impossible for Diane to be exempt from the effects of Neo Enyalius, but hearing it from her own mouth makes him feel… valid in a way. And maybe a little touched that she would tell him that much. 

“How do you keep it together?” he whispers. “I feel like...”

“I know.” Diane secures the dressing with medical tape and helps him stagger to his feet. “Go wash up. Take care to not soak the dressing.”

“Diane—” He bites at his bottom lip. 

_ Thank you.  _

She gazes up at him from the roll of medical tape, which she’s coiling back into place. His train of thought screeches to a stop at the sight of her heavy-lidded eyes. 

“Ah—Uh—” He flounders for a good few seconds before his brain flips on a lightbulb. “Aren’t you going to help me shower?”

The roll of medical tape slips out of her hands. 

“One of my arms  _ is  _ incapacitated, you know.” He tries for a grin. “It’s not like it’ll be your first time seeing me naked.”

“Half-naked,” she hastily corrects, and that’s  _ definitely  _ a blush that Connor sees this time. 

“What, me shirtless isn’t enough skin for you? That can be arranged.”

He thinks she’s going to call him “shameless” or some other variant when she draws in a long breath through her nose and breaks their staring contest. 

So he can’t find it in him to blame himself for nearly falling over when she drags him bodily by his belt loops, kicks open the bathroom door, and sits him down on the edge of the frankly massive tub rising out of the porcelain floor. His brain starts working again when her hands start unbuttoning his pants. 

“H-HOLY FUCK, WAIT—”

She straightens back up and brushes non-existent dust from her hands. Her eyes, so dark they nearly swallow all the light around them, scorch his cheeks rouge. “Try not to flirt meaninglessly.” 

He stiffens when she bends over him again, but she only reaches behind him to turn on the tap of water. Steaming hot water gushes out from the stainless steel spout, and steam begins to cloud the room. The humidity seeps into his pores, making sweat trickle down his chest. 

“Don’t get your dressing wet,” she reminds him before silently padding out of the bathroom. 

Connor stays frozen for a good few moments. After he gives himself exactly one second to internally scream, he twists the temperature knob beside the tub spout so that the water comes out freezing cold. 

* * *

The first time Alabaster displayed his magic in Camp Half-Blood happened a lifetime ago, when Luke wasn’t their sword instructor. Up until the year Connor and Travis became year-rounders, the sword instructor had been Hennessy, a son of Ares who was more vending machine than man, always ready to pick a fight and more often than not indulging in yet another can of beer to add to his stolid waistline. 

If Chiron had hoped that introducing them to an adult demigod would inspire them, Hennessy was a terrible choice. Sure, he kept his drinking away from the kids, but everyone saw how the war that ran under his veins ate him alive, cried for more adrenaline. He had a great temper, but he did have an even greater skill as a swordsman (until Luke came into his own, and he got eaten by some monster or the other disguised as a bartender). 

Connor and Travis were one of the few who weren’t too scared to always trip him up or use underhanded pranks to either get out of class or end duels early. Within two months of their entry to Camp, they managed to wrangle a deal: they would leave him out of their pranks, and he would leave them alone when he made rounds dueling students one-on-one.

Alabaster had no such luck. For a skinny preteen, he wielded a longsword with unmatched ferocity, and while he wasn’t a prodigy like Percy, Clarisse, or Luke, he held a physical self-possession that, if Connor were to describe it, made him aware of where every single one of his body parts were, which made it near-impossible to catch him off-guard.

Problem was, for all his natural talent, Alabaster wasn’t particularly inclined to put in extra effort other than what he could coast on. It pissed Hennessy off to no end. He constantly put Alabaster against the most fearsome opponents Camp had: Clarisse, Sherman, Clarisse with a freshly minted  Lamer Maimer, even Luke himself. Alabaster won some, Alabaster lost some. Alabaster hardly gave a shit. He shook his opponents’ hands and sat back down in the corner, no matter what the outcome. 

So the time eventually came when Hennessy’s non-existent patience ran out. Hennessy grabbed Alabaster by the collar, said, “You’re gonna be fighting me today, kid,” and nearly decapitated him. 

Alabaster was scared shitless; anyone would’ve been. Hennessy’s saber was nearly as tall as Alabaster and half as wide, and the son of Ares pulled no punches. Every parry against Alabaster’s blade, suddenly tiny by comparison, forced Alabaster to stumble back a few steps. Within a few seconds, he was breathing hard in exertion, and sweat was rolling down into his eyes.

That whole fight was a blur, and what happened afterwards even moreso. All any of the audience members know is that one moment, Hennessy was coming down hard on Alabaster, and the next, they nearly went blind from a blast of green light. 

When they recovered their eyesights, Hennessy lay slumped against the other side of the sword fighting arena, blood pooling under his head, and Alabaster was nowhere to be found. 

They probably called Chiron or Lee to fix Hennessy up—not that he, Travis, or Luke would know. They ran like crazy all over for Camp, looking for Alabaster. 

Connor remembers Luke looking at them with horror after they stopped short of upending the whole armory. 

“The forest,” Travis uttered, and they  _ did  _ find him there. When Luke extended a hand towards him, he flinched like he expected to be hit. 

With how distressed Alabaster was, Luke said it was a miracle that a monster hadn’t come along and eaten him until then. Connor spotted a few spots of golden dust out of the corner of his eye and decided to not say anything. 

No wonder Alabaster didn’t care about sword fighting—he was already a monster all on his own. 

For hours afterwards, Alabaster clung to Luke like Luke would disappear into thin air at any given moment.  _ Or _ , Connor privately thought,  _ leave him.  _ Connor knew from Luke about Alabaster’s strange habit of leaving at the end of every summer, only to come back the next day all beaten and bloodied and bruised. 

Needless to say, Hennessy recovered within hours, and predictably, he griped about how Alabaster’s win was unfair and unnatural and all the other adjectives he could think of prefixing “un-” onto. 

The next morning, he woke up to all his underwear missing and his hair shorn to an undercut. Connor had wanted to send him to Untarctica for Day Two until Annabeth pointedly told him that the continent was spelled with an “A.” He and Travis gave up the running joke and settled for stuffing furs from a skunk’s butt into the showerhead of Hennessy’s bathroom in the Big House. On Day Three, they wrapped his saber in five layers of bubble wrap and seven layers of duct tape. On Day Four, he finally apologized to Alabaster, who immediately got teary-eyed and embarrassed.

The second time happened the summer Clarisse and Percy sailed off into the Sea of Monsters to retrieve the Golden Fleece, the summer Thalia Grace was revived, the summer Connor and Travis officially experienced the full brunt of what it was like to handle an overcrowded Cabin Eleven. Connor and Alabaster were 14, Travis 15, but only two of them actually acted their age: the bags from Alabaster’s sleepless nights purpled and deepened, and sometimes, Connor would spot him staring into the distance, like the valley of Camp Half-Blood was a desert and not a lush meadow of strawberries and hyperactive kids. 

It was also the summer Camp Half-Blood realized that the Second Titan War was inevitable, though some clearly came to that conclusion earlier than others. On the second to the last day, Alabaster clambered up the rooftop of Cabin Six, from where Connor was watching his brother make a horrible attempt at apologizing for some prank or the other.

“Wh—Oh, hello, Witch Boy,” he said distractedly, eyes trained on how his brother flinched at Katie Gardner exiting the cabin.

Alabaster didn’t bother plastering his belly on the roof like Connor had, or even crouching down to hide from plain sight. He remained standing like some ultra-realistic scarecrow. 

“Fight me,” he finally said. 

Connor could hear the beginnings of yet another lecture from Katie. He inched closer. “What? Wait, wait, this is the best part.”

“I said, fight me,” Alabaster said again, drawing his longsword. Connor shushed him. 

“Connor Stoll—”

Connor groaned, flipping around in vehemence. “Witch Boy, later, if you please. I’ll never get another piece of blackmail like this ever again.”

Alabaster’s sword splintered a grey tile beside Connor’s head. 

“You didn’t even flinch,” Alabaster said in disgust. 

“What, like you’re gonna kill me?” Connor laughed. “I could knock you off the roof, if that’s what you want.” He rolled back onto his stomach and ignored Alabaster until he heard the other boy growl in annoyance and slide off. 

He shook his head. “Weird dude.”

He didn’t think much of it until after he freed Travis from a wall of vines Katie had ensnared him in. Off in the distance, there was a small crowd gathered around the training ground, which was curious, seeing as most campers usually spent their last three days at Camp hanging out with each other, or in the cases of great heroes like Percy, taking a well-deserved nap.

With the sun setting over Half-Blood Hill, his feet stopped in their tracks, turned him around, and took him to the arena. 

In the middle was Alabaster, face set in concentration, and across him was Silena Beauregard, relaxed and smiling. Around them was a semi-circle of sweaty, bummed-out demigods still in their armor and holding their weapons.

It looked like Alabaster was fighting people… for fun? 

From behind, Travis whispered to him, “Silena’s got charmspeak. He’s dead.”

Not a moment later, Silena Beauregard stepped forward without a weapon in hand. “Put your sword down, Al.” Oh no, she went for the nickname. 

All around the arena, Celestial Bronze clattered to the ground. 

But Alabaster didn’t even move. There was a faint green sheen hovering just over his skin, and his unnatural eyes blazed right through Silena. His mouth was forming shapes, but none of them could hear what he was saying. 

Silena frowned and crooned even more persuasively, “Al, dear, let me win. Please?”

_ He’s got a shield around him _ , Connor realized.  _ He can’t hear Silena.  _

The sheen faded from his skin, but his eyes remained eerily bright from behind his brown bangs. 

“Silena,” Alabaster said calmly, “confess your love to me.”

Silena was smiling, but her eyes were screaming,  _ WHAT THE FUCK?!  _ even as she began to walk forward, gentle hands outstretched towards him. Cheers and wolf-whistles flared from the audience. 

For some reason, elbows and shoulders began meeting Connor’s chin and chest. He  _ had  _ to see this. He  _ had _ to move forward. From behind, there was a familiar hand grabbing at his, but he could care less about it. 

He  _ had  _ to get to Alabaster. 

When Silena was less than a foot from Alabaster, he intoned, “Stop.”

Silena froze, and so did Connor. 

A small smile broke across Alabaster’s face. “Just kidding,” he said humorously, tugging off Silena’s helmet. She punched him in the shoulder as her perfect hair fell on her shoulders. 

“Alright, alright, you win this round, Al,” she conceded, shaking his hand, and Alabaster’s smile widened. It was one of satisfaction—not from victory, but from some sort of weird assurance or confirmation. “How’d you do that, though, you should teach me…”

“A magician never reveals his secrets.”

“CORNY!” someone from the crowd shouted, and they gave him a round of applause and laughs for the performance. Alabaster’s eyes sought the person. 

Instead, they landed on Connor, who had somehow made his way to the front of the crowd. 

“Care for a duel?” he offered. 

It wasn’t that Connor was scared of Alabaster, or even suspicious. He just wasn’t liking the conclusion his brain was putting together. 

“Nah, you’d beat me in a heartbeat,” Connor said. 

They both knew that was a lie. 

* * *

When Connor steps out of the bathroom, Diane has magically pulled clothes for him out of nowhere and laid it out on the bed. She respectfully turns her back as he drops the towel from his waist and one-handedly pulls on the jogging pants, which fit him perfectly. 

Then mid-jamming his right leg through, he loses balance when he notices that her muscle tee has a Reverse Boob Window as well. 

She makes a move to turn around, but Connor screams, “NO! No, you’re fine! NO, wait, I’M fine! I’m fine!”

FUCK. He suddenly wants the Sierra Silver back in his hand. His hand twitches, longing for the cigarette pack in his pants, which he left strewn on the bathroom floor. 

He decides to forego wearing a shirt, because if Diane’s going to give him something to stare at, he might as well return the favor. Bonus points for the fact that he wouldn’t have to stress the bullet wound in his shoulder. 

“Seriously, what is it with you and your shirts being backless? Did you cut it yourself? On your other shirt, you did.”

Diane turns around. Her eyes rake over his bare torso. He tilts her head at her. 

When she looks away, it’s a motion calculated to be smooth and slow. Her half-moon eyes drooped in a show of disinterest. 

“The room adapts to your needs and wishes,” she says, nodding at his jogging pants. 

“Explains the tequila and my clothes then.”

Now that she mentions it, save for the fact that the room sprawls out to a kitchenette, it looks an awful lot like his childhood bedroom back in Boston. Saccharine nostalgia climbs up in his chest as he surveys the faux wooden flooring, the funky red-and-white duvet identical to Kevin McCallister’s he’d insisted Mom find and buy for him, even the three-drawer bedside table, its dull brown offset by the rainbow scalloped lampshade sitting on top of it. 

“Oh, gods,” he cringes. “Travis and I once fought over this thing… Said I was ruining his ‘good taste’ when he had a literal Buzz Lightyear night light. Then when I came out, he had the nerve to say that he knew  _ because  _ of this stupid lamp.” He flicks it. “We have to have a plan.” 

Diane blinks at the non-sequitur.

“To get Medea out of here somehow. Except there’s no way out of here because this thing is a fucking maze.”

Diane walks over to the door. When she opens it, a bright beam of blue light nearly blinds Connor. 

She closes it, only to open it again, this time to sports fan roars. 

“The only places you can move between are your room and whichever activity you decide to do,” she explains. 

“It prevents escapes,” he realizes. “Nowhere else to go.”

She nods. “And socialization, too. It’s easier to influence a lone wolf than a pack.”

“That’s fucking genius,” he mumbles. “Alabaster would kill to dissect this place.” Her mouth twitches like she doesn’t know whether to smile or not. “When you come visit here with your dad, how do you leave?”

“It’s a passageway open only to godly guests—even the Olympians visit sometimes. It lays behind the morgue. But it requires Enyo as an escort to get through the magical barriers, and I don’t think she will let Medea go so willingly.”

Connor huffs. “Any chance we’ll be able to beg her to let us leave?”

“Our entrance into Neo Enyalius entails lifelong participation. The goddess is not accustomed to mortals retaining their free will, much less attempting to escape.” 

“You couldn’t have said something about signing over our lives before we entered?!” 

“Apologies. We were, ahem, rather preoccupied at the time.” Her lips are drawn in a grim line. “It’s not as if either of us thought that this would be a peaceful mission.”

He snorts. “Well, a little optimism won’t do a demigod any harm.”

“Hm.” Diane gets back on track. “There is a reason why she has so-called favorites.”

“They’re the ones who release the most bloodshed,” he guesses. “It’s her equivalent of having food burnt to her name.”

She nods. “To lose them, even just one, would be as if a temple to her name was being burnt. Enyo is not as widely known as the other gods; here is her main source of worship and power.” 

Bummed, Connor flops back onto the bed. He feels Diane’s weight settle across him in the dip of the cushion. “Guess my gambits and schemes have no place here. Diane, please promise to not leave me, even if I’m going to be useless here.” He rolls over onto his stomach so that his face is at her knees and pouts up at her. 

In her lap, her hands curl into fists then unclench. It’s the first time he’s seen them without the fingerless gloves since Keeseville. “I won’t.”

There’s a reason why she constantly wears those gloves, he realizes. The meat of her palms are covered with callouses, most of them old, bulky, lumps lining the bottoms of her fingers: a swordsman’s marks. He also spots a handful of gashes, milky white against her already pale skin, raised scar tissues opened and re-opened over time. The rest of the expanse is webbed with prominent ridges. 

“You should put on some hand lotion,” he absently points out, brain still running through ways they could get Medea out of Neo Enyalius. “You know, I’m not sure if there’s still hope for Medea. Enyo or no Enyo.”

Diane stiffens at the blasé name drop. “Why?”

Connor shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “I know psychosis when I see it. Hecate should’ve sent us in here with some antipsychotic… potions. Drugs might be too beneath her.” He finds he can’t maintain eye contact with Diane and instead stares some more at her hands, at the fine veins lacing her knuckles and up her forearms. “Granted, not all people who experience psychosis are violent. I would know.”

“Maybe the poppies would be of use. What else do you suggest?”

“Maybe. But aside from that? I have no idea. It might be our best bet; Medea’s hardly inclined to be friendly to us.”

“She’s human, too,” Diane says softly. “She, too, loved once.”

He snorts. “Yeah, and look where that got her.”  There’s an irritating headache beginning to sink into his temples, like someone’s holding his head in between two sharp icicles and leaving them to melt into his skin. “Love, hate, ecstasy, melancholy… they’re all the same here, aren’t they? Gods prey on passionate emotions like that because it’s something they can’t experience. But they can’t survive without it. Their power is based on our need to believe and trust in something. Then they drain us dry until we’ve got nothing left to give.”

“Do you have anything left to give?”

The chortle that leaves him is positively drenched in poison. “I thought I didn’t.” He sinks his face into his palms. “Do you?”

The cushion wobbles as Diane shifts around her weight to lift her legs. When Connor peeks through between his fingers, she’s holding the ziploc containing Alabaster’s scrap of black cloth. 

“Yes,” she says. “And I have an idea.”

Connor takes one look at her face. 

“No.”

“I didn’t even say anything yet.”

“I can’t let you follow through with your idea. If you could even call it an idea,” he argues. 

“You can’t stop me.”

“You’re not going to fight Medea. What makes you think you can capture her alive without your powers? If anyone’s going to be fighting Medea, it’s going to be me,” he states, his tone brooking no room for argument. “Alabaster’s mom had a point. I fought him and  _ won _ before.”

She drops the ziploc in front of him. “I’m not going to fight  _ Medea _ . But I am giving this to you.”

Realization dawns on him. 

“No, Diane, you can’t,” he hisses. “Look, even if you could, I don’t know how you would  _ survive _ —”

She cuts him off. “I almost did it before. At Olympus.”

He recoils at the mention of  _ that  _ night.  His head pulsates. “ _ You were dragged away in chains that suppressed your powers. _ ”

“I was outnumbered then. It’s the only way we can get out of here.”

“You’re crazy if you think that you can just—just exterminate a millennia-old immortal!” he exclaims. “I don’t remember much of that night, but—”

His mouth clamps shut when he realizes what he’s saying. 

He expects some type of weird, scathing anger—as scathing anger from someone as placid as Diane could be. Instead, her fingers flick out of his eyes a brown curl that’s still dripping water onto the tip of his nose. She tucks it away into his hairline, where the rest of his curls are slicked back and drying in the air, and pushes the ziploc into his palm. 

What a tiny, tiny thing to be deciding the fates of so many people. 

“Our host is not as powerful as an Olympian. We destroy this place, we destroy her. We destroy her, we destroy this place.”

“You genuinely know. That I...” Connor utters, stunned.  He tries to recall something, anything from that fateful trial in the Olympian throne room, but the invisible icicles skewer deeper into his skull. He scrunches his eyes shut.  “How… Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

“Because—” Her touch falls away a little reluctantly, and the expanse on his face in the shape of her calloused fingertips turns desolate. “The gods have already taken too much from me.” 

The freshly shaved skin on his jawline tingles with an odd static. Ever so slightly, her fingers make contact with the place where his jaw curved into ear. 

His whole body just about seizes up. 

“I refuse to let them take this from me, too,” Connor just barely hears over the deepening icicles and the warmth pooling at his neck. 

Well, Diane can’t get more cryptic than that.

"I get nightmares about that night."

He creaks open his eyes and sees Diane, in an unusually expressive motion, wrap her arms around herself. Her fingers yank at the edge of the window cut into the back of her muscle tee. 

"Me too."

He knows he’s not gonna get any more straight answers in the meantime. He rolls up into an Indian sit so at least, she doesn’t have a front-row seat to his blush.

“A-At least promise me that _that_ will be our last resort,” he stammers. “We’ll get Medea to take your poppies somehow. Then we escape.” He’s unable to stop himself from lifting his uninjured arm to his head. “I’ll think of something. When I can think again.”

“The longer we stay here, the more you mentally deteriorate,” Diane protests. “The longer we stay here…”

“It's just a hangover,” he lies. “Shouldn’t have indulged too much in the tequila.”

Diane’s hands flutter near his wrists, her callouses gleaming in the light of his room, and at that moment, Connor realizes that all the times he’d called her stone-faced and emotionless and whatever, he’d just been looking for the wrong things. He would never hear the weight of her past slide off her tongue, but it’s always in the way her eyes seem to unfocus when he asked her a question about Alabaster, when he brought up something he should’ve known (since five years ago,  _ five years ago what the  _ ** _fuck _ ** _ happened five years ago?) _ ; and if she was truly an unfeeling, marble-carved angel, she might have been able to talk about those things. About Alabaster, if even after leaving Camp he had retained any of that soft shyness that Connor had the privilege of witnessing, about the gods, what exactly they had done to her, about  _ them _ .

“I can teach you how to—” Diane pauses, searching for the right words— “To become a stoic, emotionless daughter of Thanatos.”

Connor rewards her attempt with a soft wheeze. “Alright, is it time for some opiates—sorry, poppies?”

She smiles. He stares. “A technique taught by Alabaster, actually.”

“And you’re okay with teaching it to me?”

She arches an eyebrow. “As long as you’re okay with it being taught to you.”

One half of his brain is still trying to process her smile, and the other half prompts him to say, “I really am rubbing off on you.”

The smile doesn’t transform her face or any of that cheesy shit—but it does lend a certain glow to her eyes, like the light of a full moon treading on the surface of the night sea. “This was meant to help me gain control over my use of the Mist, but it does help with focusing one’s mind. It might also help you with dreamwalking.”

Connor knows that some demigods, if powerful enough like kids of the Big Three, could dabble in it despite the Mist not being in their godly parent’s domain. Unfortunately, for all that his dad was an Olympian, Connor never got anything except passively inherited powers; Travis was the lucky sibling in that aspect. 

“Is this some meditation shit?” he deadpans. “Witch Boy taught you how to  _ meditate _ ?”

“Witch—” She shakes her head. “The key to handling the Mist…”

It’s a whole bunch of magic shmagic thingies, and Connor is torn between awe that Alabaster had managed to create a whole system around his powers with no prior school of thought or lore to draw from—just him and his nerdiness driving him deeper and deeper into power—and agony over his ADHD and his current headache making his life living hell. 

They have the barest bones of a plan—and a completely suicidal one at that—to accomplish Hecate’s quest, and they’re stuck in this trauma-inducing hellhole until they do. Sue him for feeling antsy. When Diane starts talking about “envisioning oneself from others’ point of view,” Connor prays to all the pantheons outside of Greece to give him the ability to astral project from his meat prison. 

* * *

After the duel with Silena, Connor tried to act normal. But the yawning abyss of rage and hopelessness made something curl in his stomach, something like  _ Traitor! _ slither into his brain.

Connor offered him Peanut M&M’s like he always did, and Alabaster, too proud, too surly, told him to toss it to his dad instead. They sat together at the mess hall, knees still knobby enough to leave bruises on their skin when they knocked against each other. Well, more on Alabaster’s than Connor’s. Alabaster was practically a banana, coloring at the slightest pressure, and it didn’t help that Connor grew ganglier with each passing year like he was being stretched out on one of Procrustes’ beds.

He doesn’t remember anymore the probably one-sided conversation that led to perhaps the most crucial thing Alabaster would ever admit to him:

“I’m leaving. Not gonna be a year-round camper anymore,” he told Connor, who nearly choked on an attempt to cram a seventh lettuce leaf into his mouth. Alabaster watched in disgust as Connor hacked up the dribbly remains. “I hope you know a hellhound has more table manners than you.”

“W—Wait, but I thought your dad—”

Alabaster’s face hardened, and he glared down at his food. He’d stopped trying to go home two summers ago—apparently, his proud, uppity professor of a father had never been able to recover his reputation after a scandal of some sorts, and the asshole had been found in the Torrington estate with the gun still in his mouth. Word had it that when Chiron broke the news to Alabaster, Mr. D himself had to intervene and calm down the son of Hecate.

“Oh,” Connor said. “This is a joke, right?”

“ _ You’re  _ a joke.”

“Wow. Hurtful. Creative, too.”

Even after Connor tried bribing him by offering him money and putting more food on Alabaster’s plate (from his own, nonetheless!) for the remainder of the dinner, he got nothing but a stink-eye. 

Later, when Connor thought the rest of Cabin Eleven was asleep, he shifted onto his left side, feigning sleep. He could see Alabaster’s nape, slightly sun-burned and splattered with freckles the shade of his hair, which was several hues darker than the Stolls’ bronze-like curls. “Don’t leave,” he whispered. “You can’t be the first.”

The sharp ridges of Alabaster’s shoulder blades rose and fell evenly. There was no reply. 

“I’ll conjugate all your Latin verbs for you,” he tried to joke in the silence. “I’ll lose all of our duels if you still want to fight me. I just won’t stop pranking you. It’s one of my greatest pleasures in life, if you must know.”

Still no reply. 

Against the sinking feeling in his stomach, Connor turned over to the other side and tore at his bottom lip until he could convince himself that tears were trickling down his face from the pain. 

Anyway, it didn’t matter. One hour later, a red-eyed Connor had to usher a sobbing ten-year-old girl out onto the front porch and convince her that it was okay to go home. That her family wasn’t destined for extinction, that she was skilled enough to fight off the monsters if she just had the courage to. That she wasn’t selfish for not being a year-rounder. It had been Travis’ turn the previous night. 

The bastard never slept early. Connor had caught him staring at the sun rising above the valley too often, only closing his eyes moments after. 

(The morning after, Alabaster was not among the campers riding the van into the city.

The morning after, Connor lost his voice screaming for Alabaster to come back. He nearly lost an arm, too, grabbing onto Alabaster’s ankle as he climbed into the Labyrinth to make haste for wherever Luke’s ship had docked most recently.

The morning after was the third and the last time Alabaster ever used his magic inside Camp Half-Blood. Travis had popped out of nowhere, shoes sparking from how fast he’d run to the Big House to tell Chiron the news, and Alabaster—

Well. Alabaster hadn’t taken the jumpscare very well. 

Connor chose to save his brother’s life, to rush him to the infirmary. 

The morning after, Connor let Alabaster leave.)

* * *

**BONUS:**

On Day Four, at breakfast, a shiny shimmering splendid Hennessy slapped down four notes in front of Luke. The Cabin Eleven table shook. Alabaster shrank in on himself. 

“Jig’s up, Castellan!” Hennessy roared. “You’re dead the next time I see you in the arena!”

Connor and Travis died. Hennessy really thought they were honoring their deal until now. 

Luke frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t write this?!” Hennessy shook the four pieces of paper at Luke’s face. “Dunno what your writing looks like, but you’ve got the face of someone who writes in this chicken scratch!”

Luke took one look at the notes, then took one look at Hennessy’s sequin-drowned clothes. 

He looked at the Stolls, and they looked away. 

Smiling serenely, he turned back to Hennessy. “Hennessy, I’m sure I—I mean, whoever the perpetrator is—means no harm. But honestly, you’d rather smell like skunk over apologizing to Alabaster? Not to mention, your wardrobe needs to be updated—it’s half a century late.”

Connor and Travis died a second time. Hennessy’s face flushed red, making him look even more like a brick, and after minutes of fuming, he gruffly said to Alabaster, “Sorry for ‘being a bully.’”

After Hennessy stormed off, Luke grabbed their ears and twisted them, smiling all the while. Over their screams of pain and pleas for mercy, he said, “You guys are on cleaning duty for the next two weeks.”

No one bullies Cabin Eleven and gets away with it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that last tidbit isn't legitimately part of the chapter, but i thought it was pretty funny anyway HAHAHAHAHAH just wanted to share it WHOOOOOOO 
> 
> wildt this fic is fucking wildt it has me googling serial killer things like "can you move your arm after you're shot in the shoulder" then i also wanna put everyone in therapy what the fuck i'm so sad. 
> 
> diane was so fun to write this chapter JKHDFSJDKDSKJSKJSK... the part where connor looks at her face and goes, "No," made my soul ascend to the ninth circle of heaven. this girl's solution to most of her problems is to hack limbs off all her enemies and honestly i can't blame her she's saved connor's ass like 29030 times by doing exactly that. 
> 
> thank u to all those who read, kudos, and comment hehehehehe u guys are my will to live. that, and getting to write diane pinning connor down with her brute strength <333


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